


we’ll leave this town in ruins

by rywaen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Hipster Steve Rogers, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Planning for rewriting this whole fic from the start has gone underway!, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Punk James "Bucky" Barnes, Read the current fic at your own discretion, Skinny!Steve, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 10:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1685768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rywaen/pseuds/rywaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers; an unemployed art major, born and raised in Brooklyn with a mile-long list of problems, both medical and otherwise. Some might call him a hipster (and they would be right). Life could definitely be better for him, what with his crushing debt from school, his best friend from college getting ready to be shipped overseas, and his ma on a steep decline. What better time for him to run into his childhood best friend?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there. First of all, I'd like to say thanks for checking out my story and welcome! This is going to be a **long** one and, currently, I'm not sure how frequently updates will be coming out. Hopefully it'll start being pretty regular once things get going, but I suppose I'll keep everyone in the loop as we go along. Please keep an eye on the tags as chapters are added!  
>  Just a few things before we start; the biggest inspiration I had for Steve's appearance was an art piece by batcii over on tumblr which can be found [here](http://batcii.tumblr.com/post/85923585933/another-commission-for-annelise-pre-serum). Also, you can follow me on [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) or find out about my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there. That's about it for now so I'll let you get to reading.  
> Beta'd by the wonderful [lotus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lotus).

“You know it’s not gonna happen, right? There’s no way.”

“Just shut up and go, already.”

“You’re gonna hurt yourself, man.”

“Sam, I swear, I will tell Riley about the Bishop’s party last summer.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wanna try me?”

“Fine. But if you hurt yourself, I’m not carrying you to the emergency room.”

Side by side they stood, short and skinny asthmatic and muscular athlete, both wiping their hands on their jeans as they planted their feet and got ready for the countdown. They nodded to one another as they began; starting at three and ending at a quick shout of, “GO!” Both jumped up and grabbed onto their individual bars, pulling up with as much force as they could muster.

The goal was to do twenty simple pull-ups, and Sam had no trouble at all meeting and then exceeding that number. He even went so far as to “forget what number he was on” a few times when he saw that his friend was, of course, lagging behind. It really was no contest. If anything, it was a beat-down.

Steve, on the other hand, struggled just to pull himself up once, let alone twice, then three times. Yet, he tried as hard as he could, his arms shaking and his lungs burning as he got to five and felt tears making his eyes damp as he tried for a sixth. Like hell he would give up just because of a lack of strength. That had never stopped him before in even worse situations.

“Rogers, you’re insane, just get down,” Sam told him, crossing his arms over his chest and just barely holding himself back from physically removing his friend from the bar. It was out of worry, not pity or smugness. Sam Wilson didn’t have an ounce of that sort of shit in him, but he’d be lying if he tried to deny the fact that he was a mother hen.

“N-No! I can— _urgh_ , I can do this!” he shouted, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried even harder. He was going to pull something, if not give himself a heart attack. Maybe both. Seven. _Fucking_ hell, it hurt. Eight. Was that even eight? It felt like eighty. Blood pounded in his ears. Nine. Okay, almost halfway there. Ten—

Without warning, his arms gave out and Steve fell onto his ass on the sand below, a low, defeated groan being Steve’s only response as he laid back in defeat. Dampened eyes closed and he could still see the sunlight, starbursts of color exploding in the distant darkness between his pupil and his eyelid. His heart was racing and he immediately reached into his pocket to grab for his inhaler, already feeling the tightness in his chest building.

One quick puff and he felt a bit better, his arms still aching and a stabbing pain was starting in his temple and spreading along the inside of his skull like cracks in a sheet of ice. Nothing too terrible, but he had pushed himself a bit too far. Not like that was new. He opened his eyes and squinted in the sunlight as he looked up to see Sam standing over him and offering him his hand to help him up out of the sand pit.

“What did I tell you?” he asked, looking both smug and worried, much like he was wont to do when Steve pushed himself too hard to try and keep up with him. “You hurt yourself. And it’s your own damn fault.”

“Whatever, I did ten. You didn’t think I could do even one.”

“Yes you did. And don’t get things twisted; I said that I knew you shouldn’t even _attempt_ to do one, and you insisted you could even when I told you that you didn’t need to prove a damn thing to me. Especially when you’ve got wet noodles for arms. C’mon.” Their hands clapped together and Steve was pulled up onto his feet, stumbling when vertigo hit him hard and he grabbed Sam’s bicep to keep himself from swaying and falling again.

The dizziness passed and Steve was upright and brushing himself off as best he could, reaching up to fix his glasses and push his hearing aid back into place since it had slipped a bit when he had fallen. A quick look around the playground and he was confident that no one had seen him fall except for Sam, which made his pulse slow a bit more. Not that it mattered if other people saw, it just wouldn’t be ideal to have bullies antagonize him for things other than just being a skinny kid with a sketchpad.

Sam started back over to the tree where they had been sitting before Steve had gotten it into his head to compete with him. Their bags were just where they’d left them and they each plopped down with a sigh as they sat in the cool shade once more.

It was a warm spring day, getting up there in temperatures, but not nearly late enough in the year to be called an early start to summer. Nice, is what it was. It’d be even nicer if the pollen wasn’t constantly making Steve’s nose want to itch and make him sneeze and cough. But still, nice nonetheless.

For a few stretched out minutes, the two friends just sat side by side, getting their breath back and stretching out their limbs as they settled in with their backs pressed to the trunk of the tree. It was peaceful, even with the sounds of children playing on the playground and various noises from the other people scattered around the large park. Busy, but not crowded like the city tended to be. Alive.

Blindly reaching for his bag, Steve pulled out his nearly-full sketchbook and his pencils that had been whittled down to stubs from constant use and sharpening. It took some time to find a blank page, but when one surfaced he settled in and began sketching. Bright eyes focused on the cityscape instead of a person or a singular subject, and the sound of furious sketching called to Sam’s attention.

“Drawing again, huh?” he asked, peering over Steve’s shoulder to see what it was that had caught his friend’s eye this time.

“Nope, I’m competing for a spot in the Olympics. Trying for a place in the endurance sitting category.”

“That’s funny, you must be a comedian,” he shot back, making the artist chuckle and reach up to push his glasses further up his nose with his knuckle, but otherwise he didn’t stop drawing. It would just be a quick sketch, after all. He had to be somewhere soon, as did Sam.

“Oh, by the way, how’s Riley doing?” he asked as he drew, glancing up once to see the weary expression on his friend’s face.

“Good, so far. Missing me, even if he won’t say it out loud. Doesn’t wanna make me worry, you know how he is.” Shrugging, he reached down and picked at the grass, his legs crossed and his posture suddenly very closed off. “I miss him. Can’t wait to be shipped out too, just so I can see him again, ya’know?”

“Yeah, I can understand that.” In actuality, Steve had never really lost anyone through separation due to war before. Even his dad, who had been a soldier but had been too young to fight in any old wars and then too old to fight in the new ones, had been killed by the civilian life, not in action. But he knew the pain of missing someone, and he certainly knew how much Sam loved Riley. Those two factors together could combine to make a deadly mixture of pain and loss.

“Not that I want to go right back to all the rest of that shit, but I’ll take what I can get.” Throwing the handful of grass he had now pulled up, he laid back onto his elbows with a deep sigh as he let his head fall back. Steve looked up from his work for a moment, just watching Sam as he retreated into his head.

They had met five years ago in college and he and Sam had been friends from the moment they had. The then-student-now-soldier had been so friendly, even to someone so opposite from himself, it had practically knocked Steve flat. It still did, sometimes. Where Sam had muscles and endurance and height, Steve had weak bones and omnipresent hospital bands on his wrists and an abnormally curved spine. Sam was everything that Steve had always wished he was physically, but he hadn’t even hesitated to accept him with open arms when Steve had approached him and asked if he could share his table in the library since all the others were full.

All it had taken was a wide, kind smile with that slight gap in his teeth that was infinitely charming to make Steve like him, and Sam had taken the artist under his wing just as quickly. It wasn’t about the strong protecting the weak; it was just about pure platonic love.

But with Sam Wilson came Riley Thompson, his best friend since birth. The other boy had accepted Steve just as quickly into their little circle of friends, keeping him close and keeping him out of harm’s way all through their years in college. Riley was more outgoing than Sam; a bit more rash and willing to speak his mind while calling people on their shit. Needless to say, he and Steve got along just fine. They had been inseparable throughout their school years, the three of them, though Sam and Riley were closer than either of them were with Steve.

Then again, there is a layer of closeness that comes with being soul mates and loving and dating said soul mate since they were fifteen years old. Steve didn’t mind; in fact, he enjoyed teasing them as they kissed in front of him, watched them both search wildly for reasons to not accept the drawings Steve gave them. He liked capturing moments that showed them exchanging loving stares, their fingers linked together, the way the cuddled on the couch together on movie nights.

The both of them shared a love that Steve treasured and wanted to help protect, as their friend. They were closer than any other couple he’d met, having been friends-turned-lovers and still best friends through both thick and thin.

They had enlisted together, gotten their letters on the same day; went through basic training together and came back home on the same plane, sitting side by side. And then Riley was shipped out months before Sam, separating them with both distance and experience. It had been a rough couple of weeks so far since both Sam and Steve had seen Riley off, but it seemed to be getting better the closer they got to Sam’s own date.

“Hey,” Steve spoke up, making Sam look over at him instead of getting lost any deeper in his own head, “Do I need to challenge you to another pull-up contest or are you going to stop moping on your own?”

Sam immediately brightened up, cracking a smile and laughing and Steve felt better already.

“Rogers, if you tried, I’d sit on you. You _cannot_ keep pushing yourself that hard, man. Seriously, what’re you gonna prove? That you’re the most stubborn asthmatic hipster in all of Brooklyn?” he asked, making Steve roll his eyes and adjust his glasses again as he turned his attention back to his drawing.

“Not a hipster,” he sniffed, pressing the graphite of his pencil a bit harder than he had originally intended.

“You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Just give up. You’re a full-blown hipster, in style alone, not even needing to mention your record collection.”

“Hey, that record player was my granddad’s. It’s only right I keep it working,” he defended, though he knew it was more than just that and Sam knew it too.

Even without his old record collection – which was honestly growing more and more each and every time he got to splurge a bit – everything about Steve screamed hipster. He had stupidly wide-rimmed glasses for his astigmatism, bracelets that were made of braided hemp and wooden beads that tapped gently against his hospital ID band that he kept on since he would be back for another checkup within a week or so. Tattoos painted the skin of his arms, flowers and vines and birds and fonts making a roadmap on his pale flesh. They disappeared up beneath his sleeves and spreading over his back and chest like roots, and ending at his knuckles with letters that spelled out BROOKLYN like a brand.

Since he had been five years old and he first learned that he could do things other than use crayons in coloring books, he couldn’t be seen without a pencil perched behind his ear, hearing aid seated comfortably below it, and a sketchbook in hand. He just wasn’t _Steve_ without art practically flowing out of his fingertips at any given moment. The most surprising thing about Steve was that he didn’t go to an art school, but just studied art at the local college.

It could be argued that his fashion sense, which mostly consisted of thrift-shop finds, was the way it was because of his lack of money. All the money that he had that could be spent on himself and things he needed were focused on his orthopedic shoes, his art supplies, and his medication. Everything else he had each month went to paying for bills, both medical and otherwise.

And it didn’t help that he was an art major graduate who was so far in debt that he could practically feel the ball and chain around his ankle, and he was currently between jobs with no prospects on the horizon to look forward to. He was lucky to live off of his own SSI and what little he could still collect for his mom.

If all of that put together made him a hipster, well, who was he to deny it?

“Yeah, whatever,” he murmured, checking his watch as he finished up his sketch. Humming as he closed the book and slid it back into his messenger bag, he gave Sam a withering glance. “I’ve gotta go, man. Sorry.”

“Hey, no, it’s cool. Your mom, right?” Sam asked, standing up at the same time as Steve and brushing his ass off to make sure he wasn’t covered in grass.

“Yeah.”

“Tell her I said hi. I’ll catch you later. Call me tonight when you get back, and lemme know if you’re up for our morning routine, alright?” Sam gave him a pointed look and Steve laughed, nodding as he grabbed his friend’s hand and pulled him in for a half-hug.

“Yeah, alright,” he said with an exasperated sigh and a smile, making Sam roll his eyes just before they parted ways.

Sliding the strap over his shoulder, Steve shoved his hands into his pockets and made his way through the park to get to the other side near the main street. He didn’t have to go far to visit his mom, the big building being the one he had been sketching in the distance from where he’d been sitting by the tree with Sam. It was why they hung out in this specific park on days like today in the first place.

He walked on auto-pilot, having made the same trek up to his mom’s floor a thousand times already and he would do it a thousand more times if he had his way. The elevator was next to silent while still being crammed full of people, making Steve shift from one foot to the other awkwardly. He made sure to keep his eyes down and his arms close to his torso with his hands in his pockets. The last thing he needed was a confrontation in an elevator. He didn’t have the best of luck when it came to elevators, after all.

As luck would have it though, he got off without a fuss, falling into a casual pace as he made his way down the hall to get to his mom’s door. It had been a week since he’d last come to see her, which honestly shouldn’t have made him feel bad, but he did. Back when she had first been moved, he had come to see her every day, barely even taking time to go home and take care of him. Now though, it had been over six months since she’d been relocated and it did more harm than good to constantly hang around her and make her worry.

A quick rap of his knuckles on his door and he stepped inside quietly, peering around the small hospital room with an easy smile on his face. It was clean and bland in her room, but it smelled like fresh flowers, a huge bouquet at sitting at the foot of her bed. Probably from the nurses themselves, since Sarah Rogers had worked in this very hospital at one point.

“Mom? You up?” he asked softly, trying not to let his shoes scuff the polished floor while he shuffled forward until he was sure that she was awake.

“Steve?” she croaked, yellowed blood-shot eyes fluttering open and crinkling in the corners when Sarah Rogers saw her son standing there waiting for her. “Oh, my baby. You look so good.”

“Thanks, ma.” The only difference in his appearance from the last time that he had visited was that he had given himself a haircut and it was a bit tidier now. Still, every time he came to visit, she always praised his looks and said that he was looking taller, more muscular, forever growing more and more handsome. “How’re you doing?”

She tried to answer but her throat was too dry and she coughed, making Steve immediately grab for the pitcher of water that they kept hear her bed. He poured her a small amount and helped her hold it to her lips. Gulping down two small mouthfuls, Steve pulled it back again and she gave him a smile as he sat beside her and set the cup down.

“As well as can be expected, baby,” she told him, resting her hands in her lap. She was thin and her face was gaunt, her physical self wasting away more and more each time Steve saw her. He wished that there was something that they could do for her, but it was enough to keep her comfortable and out of pain.

Sarah Rogers had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three years prior, having been in and out of the hospital throughout the years. She had fought well and hard against it at first, going through chemotherapy, taking all of her medicine, even accepting the loss of her hair with a sense of grace that Steve wasn’t sure he would ever fully comprehend. For a few short months, they had begun believing that she had gone into remission; she had been feeling more alive, more energized, and she could spend her days at home without worry.

Until, of course, everything went horribly wrong. The cancer came back, more violent than ever, and now she was stuck in her hospital bed, the hospice wing being her final home before her eventual passing. All he could do now was hope that her death wasn’t one filled with suffering.

“You look good, ma,” he told her, getting a scoff and the slow wave of her frail hand as she chuckled.

“I don’t. I know I don’t, baby, but that’s alright. I’m just happy to see you,” she told him, letting her hand drop down to rest on Steve’s holding his in hers as tightly as she could manage. Even to Steve, it was barely more than a gentle pressure.

“How are things going? Didn’t you have an interview with the, oh, who was it again--?”

“Starbucks.”

“Right, right, Starbucks. How did that go?”

“Didn’t get it.”

“Well fuck them,” she said, decisive bite in her voice that made Steve give a laugh that filled the room. It made her smile, to hear her boy laugh. Her sweet boy, who was going to be so hurt when she was finally gone. He had to laugh and smile as much as possible before that time came.

“Jeez, you don’t even like it when I swear like that and I’m nearly twenty-four!”

“You are, aren’t you?” Sarah sighed, remembering back when Stevie was the one who needed to be taken care of, not the other way around. “My baby’s all grown up. And grown into the most handsome man in all of the U S of A.”

“ _Ma_ ,” he groaned, rolling his eyes and hanging his head as his blush crept down his neck. She held his hand gently in her own, tracing the lines of tattoos on her boy’s skin, still smiling softly as she compared her own yellowed and withering skin to that of Steve’s, young and a gilded pale. He shone in her eyes, he always would.

“You are. You’re gorgeous. My beautiful baby boy. My golden angel,” she murmured, stroking the tendons and bones in his hand delicately as he watched her face fall, tears welling up in her eyes. Without a word, he reached up with his other hand and wiped at her eyes as gently as he could, clearing away the tears before they could fall.

“You know I love you, Steven. I always will, even after—“

“Ma. It’s okay, I love you too. More than anythin’,” he gripped her hand and sat with his knees pressed to the side of her bed, staring into her eyes with a fierce protectiveness that ran deep. If he could, he would fight her cancer hand to hand, throw in as many good punches as he could take, but it just wasn’t that easy.

For a while, they just sat together quietly after that, Steve rubbing at her joints and trying to ease the ache that had settled in since the last time she’d been allowed to be up and around. He would have given anything for her to run around at the park next door with him like they used to, but she was so fragile at this point, it would have only hurt her more to even attempt it.

They continued to chat while the television played a game show on low volume in the background, occasionally one of them murmuring an answer to a question on the show. Sarah commented on what an attractive man that new, young host was on the show and how she would be good enough at that show that she’d knock his socks off.

Steve handed her his sketchbook and let her flip through it at her own pace, explaining what each piece was and where he’d drawn it. She praised each and every one of them, even his doodles, and called him the next Michelangelo. She was his biggest fan, after all.

Visiting hours ended and Steve was asked to leave by his mom’s usual night nurse, Linda, who ushered him out with a pitying smile and a promise that he could come back whenever he wanted, just like always. The other usual evening staff had filled up the nurse’s station and they each said their hi’s and goodbye’s to Steve as he made his way back to the elevator.

“Oh, Steve!” a voice called, making him turn on his heel to see Tanya, one of the afternoon nurses, pulling on her jacket over her scrubs and rushing up to meet him before the elevator doors closed. He kept his hand out so that he would wait for her, offering a kind smile as she joined him and fixed her frazzled hair as she leaned against the wall beside him.

“How’s your mama doin’?” she asked and Steve nodded slowly, considering how to respond. It wasn’t that she couldn’t take hearing bad news, she was a good nurse. But Steve didn’t much like talking about his mom and her state of being with anyone he wasn’t really close to.

“She’s alright. Not terrible, but not great either. You know how it goes. Considering she’s as far along as she is,” he explained, shrugging and reaching up to push his fingers through his hair. Tanya nodded sympathetically and patted his shoulder gently, trying to offer him a small amount of comfort.

“She’s lucky to have such a caring son like you, though. I’m sure you brighten her day more than anyone else ever could.” Steve smiled and nodded, agreeing quietly just before she rushed out the door when they got to the lobby floor and she shouted something about catching him later.

Without anything more than his sketchbook to keep him occupied on the way home, he spent the entire time on the subway scowling every time a lurch would make his pencil mark the wrong spot. It wouldn’t have been an issue, had his eraser not gotten lost in the bottom of his bag at some point during the afternoon. After a while, he just gave up wrote a note or two to himself on his cheap pay-as-you-go phone with the little charge and reception he had.

From the station, it wasn’t far to get back to his apartment building, but Steve found himself itching to hail a cab. If he had more money on him than he did – a whole one dollar and change – then he probably would have done it, too. His arms still ached from his stupidity earlier on ( _of course Sam wasn’t going to make him do it, he had believed him from the start; it was his own stubborn ego that had him on that bar)_ and his feet were starting to ache even with his shoes tight and still fitting well, even with wear and tear.

But he was a literal starving artist, his stomach growling at him as if to make a point, so he didn’t dare call a cab. Instead, he just buckled down and took the pain of his joints and the cool night air making his lungs feel wet, made it all just push him to get home faster.

It would have been a bold-faced lie to say that he hadn’t walked a bit faster past the alleyways he had gotten into trouble in the past tonight, because while he wasn’t one to turn down a fight, he also didn’t have a death wish. A gentle prayer played like a broken record in his head, hoping that no one nearby would scream for help. Nothing would make his heroics kick in and he’d forget about his own needs to go help someone else with theirs. He kept his head low and his hands tucked into his pockets as he walked as fast as he could without tripping and falling on his face.

Luckily, no one screamed, no dark shadowy figures lunged out at him, and he got safely inside his apartment building, letting the door latch behind him with a sigh of relief. Taking a moment for himself, he slumped down against the mail-wall and just breathed. His _everything_ ached and he needed to get upstairs as soon as humanly possible.

It took just a moment more to fish his key out and open up his mailbox, shoving the letters in his messenger bag before beginning the trek up the stairs to the third floor. The elevator was, of course, broken again. That was the fifth time this year. He had been the unlucky tenant to have gotten stuck inside this last time and it had taken him over half an hour to pry the doors open enough to crawl out on his belly to escape.

Tonight would be a good night, he could take a bath and soak his bones with scalding hot water, maybe work on his web comic a bit, call Sam, just relax. Yeah, it would be real good, he could even—

Steve’s thoughts immediately were interrupted when he ran full-force into a solid wall of pure _muscle_ on the third-floor landing, losing his balance as he tipped backwards. He was, unfortunately, still close enough to the top of the staircase to have nothing but stairs to fall back onto, empty air meeting his body as he first lost his balance.

 _Oh, this is it_ , he thought. _I’m going to break my neck and die falling down a flight of stairs_. Fear gripped his heart and he felt himself lurch, trying to right himself, but not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Until he realized he wasn’t falling anymore. It wasn’t his heart that had been gripped, it was his shirt. A fist was gripping the fabric and bunching it up to the point where he would have to iron it to get the folds out, but all he could think to do was grab onto the wrist with scrabbling, fearful hands as he was suddenly pulled forward back onto his feet. Yet that did nothing but make him drop down onto his knees, his entire body shaking with adrenaline and his chest feeling tight.

A worried voice sounded muffled in his ears and he reached up with the hand that wasn’t clutching at his chest to wave whoever it was off. He would be _fine_ , he didn’t need any help, he just needed to _breathe_ , goddammit!

The minutes that it took stretched from what was clearly no more than three to feeling like half an hour for him to catch his breath and stop shaking quite as badly as he was. When he finally could stop clutching his chest and wheezing, he took a few hard lungfuls of air and shook his head hard enough to make his glasses askew. His hearing aid had fallen out from the commotion – which would make sense since the person who had helped him still sounded far away and muffled – and he quickly pushed it back in and managed to stand himself back up onto shaky limbs.

“I’m okay. I’m fine. Thank you, I—“

As soon as he’d finished calming himself down enough to _not_ be gasping for air from the shock of almost getting killed by muscles and a flight of stairs, Steve Rogers choked on the words that got stuck in his throat.

The man before him wasn’t just a wall of muscle that he had the misfortune of running face-first into at the top of a flight of stairs; oh no. No, this particular wall of muscle happened to be attached to a very familiar face, one that he wouldn’t forget even after a million years of being apart. One that he would know out of a million different people in a crowd, could pick him out by the sound of his laugh alone, could always rely on him to be there when he got himself into trouble.

A face he hadn’t seen in over eight years.

“ _Bucky_?!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky chat for the first time in eight years. It's kind of awkward at first, but how awkward can you really be around the guy you still know as the best friend you ever had?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can follow me on [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) or find out about my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there.  
> Beta'd by the wonderful [lotus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lotus).

“Do I know you?”

Hearing those words was enough to make Steve’s heart shatter; his expression that had been one of surprise and excitement immediately falling, now one of hurt and confusion. It had been so long now, having gone eight years without hearing even a hello from the person who had been his best friend of ten years. 

Now, seeing the confusion and lack of recognition in his eyes; while it was understandable, that didn’t make it hurt any less. Had Bucky really forgotten about him? Had he truly been able to forget about the literal decade of their lives that had been spent together, just the two of them against the world?

“You—You don’t remember me?” he asked, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. The idea that he could be forgotten so easily wasn’t an easy one to accept, after all. There were people that swore by being able to remember his crooked grin until the end of time, and he’d be damned if Bucky ended up being the one exception. “It’s me, Buck. Steve! Steve Rogers?”

Searching his face for any sign of recognition, Steve took in all of the changes in Bucky’s appearance. It had been almost a decade, but he looked just as he had when they first met in ways that only Steve could recognize. His eyes were still bright in their liveliness; mischievous and intelligent, albeit confused and searching for the moment. But there were dark circles and aged sorrow etched under his eyes where there had only been joy and carefree youth before.

The last he’d seen him, they had both been sixteen years old and still had baby fat clinging to them in a last ditch effort to stay young and child-like. Bucky’s face was more defined; his jaw stronger and his soft edges having melted away with time, replaced by strong bone and muscle. There was a light dusting of stubble on his face, making him look older than he was at twenty-four. But then again, the way his muscles were defined under that shirt of his, as well as how he had shot up in height did wonders for being able to look his age, if not older.

He had a style that could be called punk, to an extent. His hair was long and wavy, but only on one side; the right. On the left side of his head, he had a length of hair that looked as if it had been shaved into an undercut at one point. It had grown out by now to be around the length that it used to be when his ma made him cut it every month to keep it looking nice and neat. Oddly enough, the mismatched sides suited him rather well, just like the piercings just above his right eyebrow and an industrial piercing through his left ear.

There was the teasing glimpse to be seen of a tattoo on his skin, the edge of the ink showing from underneath the sleeve on his left arm, but Steve couldn’t make out what it was. Just as he got close enough to guessing, his attention was drawn right back to Bucky’s face when he spoke.

“Steve?” he asked, brow furrowed until a look of recognition passed over his expression and his eyes lit up. “Oh my god, Steve! No, shit—Of course I remember you! _Christ_ , I’m sorry, I’ve had a stupidly long day, haven’t slept in going on… forty-eight hours,” he told him with a sigh as he checked his watch and reached up to scratch at the short hairs on his head. “But that’s whatever. Fuck, Steve! It’s been what, six, seven years?”

As soon as Bucky had remembered him, Steve lit up all over again. He was practically bouncing on his toes, only realizing once his balance wobbled that it wasn’t so smart to do that after almost tumbling down the stairs once this evening. He stepped away from the staircase, just to be safe, and he gave his old friend a huge grin.

“Eight, if you can believe it! How have you been, man? I haven’t even seen you on like, facebook or anything like that. I finally got a computer, by the way,” Steve told him with a laugh. It had been a huge deal as soon as he had finally been able to get a computer, having never been wealthy enough to own more than a dinosaur-era television set as he was growing up. A desktop computer had been out of the question until he had even graduated from high school, and by then he’d been able to save up for an old used laptop.

Until he was eighteen years old and already free of the confines of status quo of high school and constantly surrounded by pop culture, he had felt more like a man out of time than one of his peers. Shows that came on when he wasn’t working were, for the most part, hard to keep up with and the internet was an enigma in and of itself. He’d used the school computers in the library when he needed to, but for personal browsing it was a completely different story.

Needless to say, as soon as he had actually gotten the hang of being a part of the internet generation, he had taken to it like a fish in water. While it wasn’t his favorite medium, drawing with a tablet was less expensive when it came to long-term supplies. Social media let him actually connect with peers for what felt like the first time in his life, and everything was just _better_. That is, until he realized that his best friend of so long ago was next to nowhere to be found online.

“Yeah, I’ve been…” Bucky trailed off, searching for the right word and tilting his head, “I’ve been alright. Been all over the place for a while now, haven’t really had time for things like facebook.” He shoved his hands in his pocket and shrugged, his head ducking down with a sheepish smile on his face as he glanced down to the ground. “The important question is how have you been? You look even more like a punk than you used to. Still just as skinny, though.”

Steve let out a laugh and he kicked at Bucky’s boot with the toe of his own well-worn shoe, not hitting hard enough to be more than a bump against his toes, but just hard enough to make his intention clear. “God, you’re still just as much of a stuck-up jerk, aren’t you?”

“You know it.” The smile Bucky gave him was blinding, ever so charming and could make a million guys and gals alike swoon, just as Steve remembered.

Even when they had been separated when they were sixteen, Bucky had been a heartbreaker; his mom had called him that ever since Steve could remember. Probably from before they had even met. It was a fitting title, as James Buchanan Barnes could melt the hearts of even the coldest teachers in school, could break up fights with just a cool line and a smirk in the direction of whomever Steve had picked a fight with. With age, that smile had just become more potent; could probably make a whole room full of people turn and stare with just the slightest change in expression.

The effect it had on Steve himself had always varied; six-year old Steve hadn’t trusted it until Bucky had held up his hands and let him get up from the blacktop all by himself. Ten year old Steve had thought it was the stupidest expression he’d ever seen and frequently mocked him for it, while secretly trying to replicate it by making faces at himself in the mirror. Sixteen year old Steve had felt his heart breaking when he saw that smile telling him that he’d see him again someday, but not being able to tell if it was a lie.

“Oh, so, I guess I should thank you for saving my life, by the way,” he told him, jerking his head towards the stairs that he’d been seconds from tumbling down and snapping his neck.

“Hey, what are friends for?” Bucky replied easily, then looking uncomfortably thoughtful as his expression shifted and twisted. “That is, if we’re still friends.”

“What?” An incredulous laugh escaped from Steve’s lips, searching Bucky’s face to see if he was actually serious. His smile quickly fell away though when he saw that he was _serious_. “Bucky, goddamn, I know it’s been a few years, but you and I not being friends? You _must_ be joking.”

Though he was only quiet for a few short seconds, it was still a few seconds too many. Steve’s heart clenched in his chest when he saw a flicker of what looked like unease and uncertainty in his friend’s eyes. The dark circles beneath them suddenly had him much more curious about exactly where he had been all this time. He wanted to ask, desperately wanted to know, but his feet were still aching from being out on the town all day, his back protesting as he stood up straighter and tried to ease some of the discomfort.

“Yeah, I mean, of course I’m kidding, whatever,” Bucky said, trying to play it off with a chuckle and another shrug, but Steve just scowled.

“Don’t be a liar, Barnes. Eight years or not, I can still read you like a goddamned book.” Arms crossing over his chest, he met Bucky’s eyes with his scowl still in place, though he eased up as soon as he saw the pitiful desperation still in his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I still be your friend?”

Hesitating, Bucky shifted from one foot to the other, mouth opening to voice one excuse but closing before he actually said anything, then trying another and letting it end in the same unspoken way. Finally, he decided on a reason that he thought Steve might buy into.

“I didn’t recognize you at first.”

“So? You just saved my life and because of you, I didn’t break my stupid neck on the stairs. And we haven’t seen each other in, again, _eight years_! I didn’t know you were _you_ until I actually looked.”

Instead of being relieved by Steve’s statement of the obvious, it seemed to only make Bucky even more frustrated; whether it was directed at himself or at Steve, he wasn’t sure. He shifted his weight again and scratched furiously at a spot on his scalp just behind his ear.

“You don’t know what I’ve been doing these past few years! I could be a dangerous criminal, for all you know.”

“You’re not.” Not even a hint of hesitation or doubt in his voice. Bucky just rolled his eyes. “You wanna know how I know?”

“Yeah, how?”

“Because you’re a fucking idiot.”

Without even a hint of hesitation or remorse, his arms crossed over his skinny chest, Steve stared Bucky down. Honestly, he was ready to throw the first punch, should it come to it. Then again, that wasn’t anything new for Steve. 

At first, Bucky just scowled, looking for all the world as if he was just as ready to start a fight with Steve. Again, his lips flapped open and shut, open and shut, as he tried to decide on what exactly to say to Steve, be it a biting retort or an insult. But his expression of anger and frustration slipped away before he could decide on what to say and he instead cracked a smile and laughed heartily, his head shaking.

“Well, you got me there, asshole.”

Not even missing a beat, Steve joined in with his own laughter and reached out to shove at Bucky’s shoulder with his knuckles curled into a fist in a mock-punch. Replying with his own palm stretched out, Bucky’s hand pressed against Steve’s cheek and shoved him back, the both of them laughing and swatting at each other for a good long minute or two until they heard a door squeaking on its hinges behind them. They broke apart just in time to see the elderly woman from two doors down from Steve’s place giving them a disapproving look and shaking her head as she passed by them to the staircase.

Hands shoved into their respective pockets, Bucky and Steve both shared fleeting glances with one another as they watched her shuffle down the stairs and heard her move slowly all the way to the front door. Silence stretched between them until they both recognized the sound of the front door locking automatically behind her from downstairs, the both of them immediately letting out a riotous amount of laughter that had them clutching at their stomachs.

“Did you see her—“

“I know, holy shit—“

Containing themselves enough to finally breathe again, Steve stood up and wiped his eyes just as Bucky rubbed at his face and groaned. They could both agree that it was good to laugh over stupid shit like that together again. It felt right.

“So, I guess I should ask, why the hell are you even here?” Steve prompted, remembering that he hadn’t even yet questioned _why_ he had run into Bucky, of all people, not twenty feet from his front door.

“What do you mean?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion, then jerking his head towards the door at the other end of the hall, directly across from Steve’s. “I live there.”

“You…” At first, he considered that he was hearing things, mostly because Bucky Barnes could _not_ have just moved into The Stalker’s apartment.

The Stalker, as the name Steve had given him implied, had been in the business of stalking Steve from the moment that he had moved in. The guy couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, maybe mid-thirties, but he had acted like a hyper kid whenever he saw Steve in the building. He’d actually knocked on Steve’s door the day he moved in, claiming that he was going around to everyone on the floor and introducing himself. First of all, who the _hell_ did that? Secondly, Steve had been near the door all day waiting for Sam and Riley to come by, and he clearly remembered no sounds of knocking on any other doors both before and after The Stalker had come by to say hello.

For six agonizing months, this guy had been there almost every time Steve left his apartment. Doing laundry; he’d be there offering to help him carry it down. Getting his mail; he’d chat him up at the mail-wall. Going out to meet Sam for their morning workout; he’d be there, sweats on and asking if he’d like some company.

After half a year of enduring this, Steve finally snapped and reported the guy to the landlord. Unsurprisingly, the landlord barely even blinked at him when he told him what was going on, but somehow or another, The Stalker had disappeared soon after that. Since then, the apartment at the opposite end of the hall had been sitting empty.

That is, until now.

“You live _there_?” Steve asked eyes wide enough behind his glasses to make Bucky laugh.

“Yeah, I just moved in. That’s why I haven’t slept; I’ve been busy settling in. Why?”

“ _Why_?” Steve laughed again, shaking his head and pointing directly at his own door at the other end of the hall. “Because _I_ live right _there_ , that’s _why!_ ”

That bit of information made Bucky’s expression morph into one incredibly similar to Steve’s as they both spent a good amount of time looking between one door and the other.

“No fucking way.”

“ _Yes_ fucking way!”

“Well,” he began, smirking as he held out his hand to Steve as if he was going for a handshake, “I guess that means we’re neighbors now, punk.”

“Screw you,” was Steve’s curt reply before he slapped Bucky’s hand away and practically leapt at him for a hug instead, his arms squeezing around his friend’s middle and making his already sore arms ache with the force of it. He refused to let go though, only even slightly relaxing once he felt Bucky’s arms wrap around his neck to return the hug.

It felt like old times on cold nights, hugging Bucky again. It felt like wet, rattling coughs that kept him awake while strong, loving arms locked around him and kept him warm as he shivered and sniffed. It felt like fights on the playground that were only broken up when the teacher dragged the other kid away, and Steve was dragged back by Bucky, the brunet murmuring in his ear, _“I know you had ‘im, Stevie, but you’re gonna get detention already. Just chill, we’ll get him back, the both of us.”_

“Alright,” the brunet began as he drew away, holding the grinning blond at an arm’s length as their eyes met again. “Unfortunately, I was just on my way out. I’ve gotta grab a few last things I left with a friend while I was getting settled. How about we catch up more later?”

“As if I would say no.”

“Good. Then I’ll talk to you, what, tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow’s good.”

“Great.”

Bucky began walking backwards toward the stairs after he let Steve go, still smiling brightly at him and not quite letting go of their eye contact just yet. It had really been _so_ long since they’d last seen each other. Steve wished that his body would stop screaming at him so that he could actually invite him into his place. Maybe they could drink some hot cocoa or coffee and stay up all night, reminiscing, catching up with one another properly.

But his aching limbs and growing pinch in his back had him holding his tongue. Tonight wasn’t a good night for him to ignore his own needs in favor of someone else’s. He needed a proper night’s rest tonight, and staying up all night with Bucky would have been counter-productive to that.

“You’re gonna fall,” he said instead, watching as Bucky got even closer to the top of the stairs. “And I can’t catch you like you caught me.”

“Am not. I’ve got actual balance, unlike _some_ people.”

“Oh, is that how it is?”

“That’s how it is and you damn well know it.”

“Yeah, guess what? Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.”

Bucky’s laugh echoed through the stairwell, bouncing off the concrete and the wood alike, hitting Steve square in the chest and making his face heat up. He scowled and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

“Seriously, you’re gonna fall. Just walk down the stairs the right way, you idiot.”

The only reply he got was more laughter from the brunet as he turned on his heel, going halfway down the stairs to the landing in between the first and second floors. Once there, he turned back and saw Steve standing there at the top of the stairs, still watching him.

“What?”

“What _what_?”

“What are you staring at?”

“ _You_ , you idiot.” Steve paused as he chewed on his lip, his hands shoved into his pockets again. He wrapped his fingers around his phone and remembered that he didn’t have a way to contact Bucky. “You didn’t give me your number.”

“Shit, you’re right. Here,” Bucky pulled out his phone and quickly jogged back up the stairs, handing Steve his phone so that he could put his number in for him. Adding himself as a contact to Bucky’s phone, he then sent himself a text through his friend’s – much fancier, probably even on a phone contract with a plan and a monthly bill – phone and got Bucky’s number saved into his own contacts before handing it back.

“There.” He handed his phone back to him and shoved at the brunet’s shoulder again when he started making kissy noises at him.

“Oh _boy_ , I got _Steve Roger’s_ number! Wait til I tell all the gals down at the club!” he crooned, getting a harder punch on the shoulder for that one, and it made him laugh even harder.

“Just _go_ already! I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. _Bye_ , Stevie.”

“Shut up. _Bye_.”

This time, as Bucky turned to head down the stairs, Steve turned on his heel as well and practically stomped over to his own front door. His keys were still in his pocket rather than his bag, so he went in immediately and fell face-first onto his couch with a deep sigh. His back and feet were aching, his arms were sore and he knew they’d be to the point of painful in the morning. But despite all of that, the one thing he could actually focus on was the fact that his face was warm and his heart was thumping hard in his chest.

Even when he closed his eyes, he could still see Bucky’s face. He had been like a ghost in his memories, just the echo of laughter and a few old photographs he had left to accompany them. And now, his face was as clear as day again, breathing new life back into Steve’s memories of his childhood and the time they had spent together. 

The rest of Steve’s evening consisted of laying face-down on his couch until his face stopped feeling quite as hot, then soaking in the tub for half an hour. He made himself a meager dinner of leftover pizza and Chinese, then spending the rest of his waking hours working on new pages of his comic.

He wasn’t running one that was very popular or even that great, but hey, it was fun and the ad revenue on the site was an extra bit of money in his pocket. Or, as it was most of the time, towards food or bills. Either way, it was a fairly productive evening for him and when he woke up at the insane time of six am the next morning, he wasn’t quite as grumpy as he usually was.

It might’ve been the fact that he remembered that he was now living there with Bucky just across the way as soon as he woke up. Or, it could have been that he woke up to find two texts on his phone from Sam, asking if he was still up for their morning, and scolding him for not calling him last night like he should have.

Sending a text back, Steve got up and dressed in his workout clothes – one of those sportswear tank tops that let your skin breathe even when you sweat that he’d gotten from Sam as a present last year, a pair of sweat slacks, and an old pair of sneakers – and he ate a bowl of cereal to have something in his stomach. Once that was done, he worked at wrestling with his bike to get it out the door and ready to go down the stairs before Sam got there to pick him up.

After only one slip-up where his front bike tires had managed to get wedged in one section of the staircase railing, Steve managed to get out of the front door with little difficulty. Perching on the seat of his bike while he waited for Sam to show up, he skimmed through his contacts on his phone, pausing more than once over Bucky’s name.

It was kind of pathetic, but it was just too damned exciting to have his best friend from childhood back in his life, not to mention having his number at his fingertips. They could talk at any time now. Hell, they could _see_ each other at any time, just like when they were kids.

Biting the bullet, he pulled up a new text window and typed out a simple, _“morning, neighbor.”_ That wouldn’t be weird, right? Just a simple hello, while reaffirming the fact that they were neighbors now. Good. He hit send and watched it go, swallowing hard as he waited to see if he got a reply. The Bucky he knew always woke up early, so if he was on the same internal schedule, the text shouldn’t be the thing to wake him up.

His phone vibrated in his hand and he opened the message at the speed of light -- or at least as fast as his phone would load -- and he grinned when he saw his reply. _“good morning 2 u 2.”_ What a nerd.

“Okay, why are you smiling at your phone like a stupid love-struck teenager?” Sam’s voice cut through his thoughts, making him jump and almost drop his phone onto the concrete.

“Jesus Christ, Sam!” he hissed, shoving his phone down as far as it would go into his pants pocket and rubbing at his forehead as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Quit sneaking up on me! I’ve got enough problems; I don’t need a heart attack on top of it all.”

“Man, I’ve been standing here for the past two minutes, you just didn’t notice,” he retorted, smirking despite the grief Steve was giving him. “We gonna go or are you just gonna lag behind today?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Let’s go,” he agreed, sighing once before pushing down on his pedals and setting a slow pace. Sam jogged beside him, without a bike as always. Not that he didn’t have one. In fact, Sam had one of those fancy bikes that had the different gear settings and a nice, cushioned seat. It was just that since running made Steve feel like he was going to keel over and die, Sam ran beside him while Steve huffed and puffed away just from riding his bike a bit too fast to keep up with Sam.

They had started going on a morning jog and ride two years back when they were both still in college and had been in the same dorm. At first, they’d tried having Steve run alongside Sam, but that made Steve’s chest feel like it was going to explode, and Sam didn’t get as much of a workout like he’d wanted. So, to save them both a mountain of trouble, Sam gave Steve his old bike and they had gotten into the habit of going at least three times a week together.

That way, they saw each other at least three times a week, had time to catch up if it had been a few days since the last time they were together, and Sam got his minimum amount of training done while Steve got his maximum done.

“So, what’s with the dopey look at your phone, anyway? I assume it wasn’t for the phone itself, you hate that shitty thing,” Sam asked conversationally once they had set the pace. Steve sighed and leaned forward, his weight resting mostly on his handlebars as he tried to decide whether or not he would tell the truth.

“Okay, well…first of all, you’re right, I hate this phone. And before you say it, no, you _still_ can’t put me on your stupid family plan.”

“Your loss. You could get one of those new Samsung ones right now, too.”

“Whatever. And secondly, it’s because I met someone. _No—_ “

“Ooooh! _Steve_ , buddy, have you been holding out on me?”

“ _No!_ Shut up, it’s not like that.”

“Alright, alright, tell me what it’s like, then.” Sam shot him a look that was practically daring him to go on, which Steve just rolled his eyes at and picked up the pace to make Sam run faster if he wanted to keep up. He did. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat yet. The athletic bastard.

“What I _meant_ was that I met someone that I haven't seen in years. An old friend.”

“An old _friend_ , huh?” Sam asked, still grinning as he waggled his eyebrows and Steve scoffed at him.

“ _No_ , not like that. He was my best friend since I was like, in kindergarten. We were friends for ten years and then his parents died and he was sent away to some like, foster care home or an orphanage or something like that.”

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke. Steve focused on keeping his eyes on the path they were on and Sam focused on keeping their pace as well as processing what Steve had just told him.

“Damn. That’s rough.”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even know if he was _alive_ or not until last night. Never found him on facebook or anything like that even when I finally got a computer. He was just…a ghost from my past until I literally ran into him last night.”

“Whoa, back up, you _ran_ into him? Literally?” Sam asked with a laugh poised and ready to spill out once Steve explained it all to him.

“Well, he was going downstairs and I didn’t see him, ran face-first into his chest – which is, by the way, pure fucking _muscle_ – and he managed to keep me from breaking my neck on the stairs.”

As expected, Sam let out an uproarious laugh, making the both of them have to stop for a moment while he caught his breath again and shook off the last lingering giggles that got caught in his throat on the way up. Clearly, he was imagining Steve, all flailing arms and resigned fate, walking straight into a guy’s chest and letting it all happen.

“Alright, that was a damn good image. Where’d you meet him?” he asked once they started up again, Steve shaking his head and now wishing that he had let this just blow over without mentioning what had happened to Sam.

“In my building. He just moved in.”

“ _No_ way.”

“Yeah. In The Stalker’s apartment, too.”

“Oh shit, man. That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

“I know, I told him that. I mean, not the thing about The Stalker, I haven’t told anyone but you, Riley, and my landlord about that guy, but we were both incredibly shocked.”

“So, some dude—“

“Bucky.”

“What the hell kind of name is ‘ _Bucky_ ’?”

“It’s a nickname. His name’s James, but his middle name’s Buchanan.”

“Alright. Sure. So, _Bucky_ , whom you have had no contact with in – how many years?”

“Eight.”

“Eight years. Christ. He just shows up out of the blue, saving you from your own idiotic clumsiness and his _muscular_ chest. And to top it all off he’s now living directly across the hall from you? Have I got all that?”

“Yeah, sounds about right,” Steve allowed, nodding as he slowed their pace down a bit. It always got a bit harder for him after the first few minutes, and Sam fell back to keep with him at the same speed.

“You know what, I’d say that definitely warrants a few dopey smiles at electronics. Maybe even just out of the blue—oh! Look, there’s one now! You sure you ain’t got a crush on this _friend_ of yours, Rogers?”

“ _What_?! No! Of course not, he’s just—he’s _Bucky_ , and I haven’t seen him in, like, forever. Of course I’m happy about him being back. Just…shut up, I don’t have a crush.”

“Alright, fine, have it your way, then.” Sam held up his hands in surrender and laughed, making Steve try to force down the blush that crept up his neck, though it did no good. Because of the full-body flush that was already setting in from getting his blood pumping, he knew he’d be warm all over and as red as a beet by the time they got back to his building.

Sam, on the other hand, was practically _glistening_ already. Which wasn’t fair. At all. But considering Sam was a soldier having already gone through basic, not to mention having played football all through school, while Steve was lucky to get out of bed without keeling over sometimes, it made sense.

It didn’t take too much longer to get back to Steve’s building but Steve was huffing and puffing by the time they stopped, his cheeks and throat red and his heart pounding in his chest as he practically fell off his bike and stretched out on the patch of grass in front of his building. Sam, ever the concerned friend, just stood back and laughed as he watched him stretch out and groan. He threw his arm over his eyes and tried his best to catch his breath.

“Fuck,” Steve panted, pulling in a deep breath, “ _you_.”

“You okay?” a voice asked that was certainly not Sam, and Steve pulled his arm away from his eyes and sat up fast, making himself dizzy as he blinked up in the sunlight to see Bucky standing there, smirking.

“Buck!” he gasped, looking between him and Sam before scrambling to get back onto his feet, almost tripping on his bike as he got up. “ _Shit_. Sorry. Hi.”

“Hi,” he was smirking still and he glanced over, clearly looking at Sam, who was still laughing. “What’s up?”

“We were just, uh, biking. I was biking. Sam was running. Oh! This is Sam, by the way, my best friend.”

“Hey, man,” Sam greeted, stepping closer and offering Bucky his hand to shake, which he took without a second of hesitation.

“Your best friend, huh? Nice to meet you, Sam. I’m James. My friends call me Bucky,” he explained, to which Sam just nodded and stepped back again, his hands on his hips as he watched Steve get even more flustered. He, of course, had gotten stuck on the fact that Bucky had been replaced as his best friend.

“I mean, you’re still my best friend. But I’ve known Sam for, uh, four years now, and—“

“You’re gonna give yourself an ulcer. Cool it, punk.” Bucky told him with a snort, nudging his shoulder with his knuckles lightly, making Steve just laugh awkwardly for a moment, his face still beet-red.

“Steve was telling me about you, Bucky. You mind if I call you Bucky?” Sam asked with a cautious but friendly smile. With what Steve had told him about this guy, well, he wasn’t sure how he’d react to being talked about without him being around.

“Yeah, that’s fine. What’s he said about me?” he asked, though he was smiling as he spoke.

“Oh, just about how you saved his life last night on the stairs. Good job, there. Don’t know what I’d do without my partner in the morning.”

Bucky laughed and Steve watched them interact with a smile that was growing wider and wider by the minute as they spoke. They were honestly getting along better than Steve had hoped to expect. In fact, he hadn’t even had a chance to think about the two of them meeting, what with everything else filling up his head and making it hard to focus on anything besides the fact that Bucky was back in his life. But not only did he have Bucky back now, he had Bucky back and laughing with Sam, the two of them getting on famously. His best friends, being friends. He was _this_ close to jumping for joy.

“Alright, well, I’ve gotta run again. Need to be in to work in a few hours and I still need to get back home from here. But it was great meeting you, Bucky.”

“Yeah, likewise. Oh, here, before I forget, punch your number in for me, would’ja?” he asked with one of his exceedingly charming grins. Sam took his phone with one of his own handsome smiles and they exchanged numbers.

“See ya, Steve. I’ll call you later, let you know how Riley’s doing,” he promised with one final wave before he jogged off down the road, leaving Steve leaning against his propped-up bike beside Bucky with another dopey smile on his face.

“What?” Bucky’s voice cut through to him again and Steve blinked quickly and shrugged, playing it off as if he’d just been spacing out.

“Nah, nothing. Just glad you got to meet Sam. Isn’t he great?”

“Yeah, he seems like a one of a kind guy,” the brunet agreed, making Steve’s dopey grin come back. “What? What now?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re such a punk.”

Wheeling his bike back inside while Bucky held the door open for him, Steve started up the stairs, trying to get his bike up to the second floor by himself again. With a shout and a playful insult, Bucky moved him out of the way and picked his bike up by himself and carried it up, no problem. He literally picked it up by the frame of the bike and practically hoisted it up over his shoulder like it was nothing. Steve, admittedly, had to stare for at least a few seconds before he followed him up the stairs.

“Thanks, but I could have gotten it,” he grumbled after the initial shock had passed.

“Yeah, you could have, but it would have taken you five times as long and you already went and rode the damn thing for however long you were out with Sam. So, call us even.”

“How the hell does that make us even? You’ve done two things for me now; I’ve done nothing for you. That’s not even at all!”

“You introduced me to Sam, there’s that.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that,” and he had to, meeting Sam was something that everyone should have the privilege of doing at least once in their lives. “But now you just carried this up for me. Uneven.”

“Fine. Do something for me, then.”

“ _Fine_. I will.”

“Good.”

“Come to our movie night tomorrow.”

“Movie night?” Bucky asked, brow furrowed in confusion. “What’s any of this got to do with a movie night?”

“It’s what I’m doing for you. You’re going to come over and watch movies with me and Sam all night tomorrow. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You got that?”

Just for a second, it looked as if Bucky was going to refuse for whatever reason he may have to say no to something as spectacular as a movie night with Steve and Sam. But he quickly began chewing on his lower lip instead of answering, and he thought it over.

“Yeah, I guess I can make it. What time?” he asked, probably checking over his mental calendar to make sure he was free.

“Tomorrow night. Starts at six. We always order Chinese and pizza and we watch one movie that Sam has that I’ve never seen, and one that I have that Sam’s never seen. If you start coming every week, you can start bringing movies too.”

Steve gave him a stern look, as if daring him to say no, or that he didn’t want to come, or that it didn’t sound like fun. If he said anything but yes, quite frankly, he’d give him what for. But thankfully, both for Bucky and for Steve’s pride, a few seconds later he answered with an affirmative;

“You know, that sounds pretty great. I’ll be there.”

“Good. You better be.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys enjoy a movie night together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can follow me on [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) or find out about my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there.  
> Beta'd by the wonderful [lotus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lotus) and [Shilo](http://spoiledrogers.tumblr.com).

If there was one thing in particular to be said about movie night with Sam and Steve – Riley had been a weekly attendee as well until he got sent overseas – it was that it was casual. On the nights when they met at Steve's apartment, they easily settled in among the mess they made of throw blankets and pillows from Steve’s couch. They often left their trash and belongings scattered about until getting around until it was time for them to go, sometimes not until the next morning. So, for the most part, Steve didn’t feel the need to tidy up his desk or pick up the occasional random sneaker or jacket lying about when Sam came over. There was no pressure, no need to impress anyone.

Sam’s place was much of the same. He wasn’t a messy guy really; he kept most of his things in place and put away right. Occasionally, if Steve saw a mess in the corner or saw a hat hanging off of the corner of the entertainment center, he didn’t mention it.

Riley, who lived with Sam, was the messiest of the three of them. He tended to leave bits of himself everywhere he went, even when he was at Steve’s apartment. It had been a month and a half now since he’d been shipped out, and Steve was still finding little things here and there that were distinctly Riley’s. Usually it was just a shirt or a jacket or sometimes a CD or a video game they’d played together. His presence lingered even when he was miles away.

This week was Steve’s turn to host movie night, and usually he would spend the day just making sure that they had enough in the way of snacks and their usual blankets and pillows were set out and ready. No big deal.

Except that as soon as he walked back into his apartment after getting the okay from Bucky, he realized that _Bucky Barnes_ was going to be in his apartment. Which was, you know, kind of a big deal.

Yes, they had been best friends when they were kids, and if things hadn’t changed much over the years he was pretty sure that Bucky was still going to be as laid back as he always had been. But that wasn’t the point. Steve’s mother had always told him that first impressions were important, even if they didn’t mean a damn thing in the end. After years of knowing someone, a first impression tended to get lost within the mess of memories. But, if someone’s first impression of your home was that you were a no-good slob who couldn’t pick up after himself, well, then that’s what they’re gonna think about you until you show them different.

Steve didn’t want to be seen as a no-good slob who couldn’t pick up after himself. He may have been a messy kid just like everyone else, but that didn’t mean that had to continue with the trend. Which led him to cleaning his entire apartment, even the places that he was one hundred percent sure that Bucky wouldn’t see while he was there.

The floors were vacuumed, swept, and mopped, the counters wiped down and sanitized after he moved all of his appliances, the fridge and the microwave both cleaned out and wiped down. Steve’s bedroom got the same treatment; carpets vacuumed, sheets washed and then bed made. His bathroom was sparkling from the floor to the tops of the mirrors by the time he was finished. Even his perpetually messy desk in the living room was straightened up and his art supplies were organized.

The whole project lasted the rest of the day and well into the evening, including taking breaks to make himself food and eat. That time being spent curled up in his desk chair while he messed around online until he forced himself to get back up and finish cleaning.

It was, quite frankly, the cleanest his apartment had been since the moment he had moved in. If he hadn’t been nearly dead on his feet, he might have had time to be proud of himself before he collapsed on his bed and slept soundly straight til morning.

He woke up to the light streaming through the curtains, overly warm because of the lazy sunlight heating up his room. With a groan, he rubbed at his face and yawned as he checked the clock. It was already almost ten in the morning and he found himself immediately relieved that he’d taken care of all of the cleaning the day before.

The first step in his day was to fully accept the fact that he was a useless member of society. With that done, he pushed himself up and stretched, his hair going in every direction as he reached blindly for his glasses and his hearing aid. He put both in place on the bridge of his nose and in his ear respectively and stood up on tired legs to make his way to the bathroom.

He had just about eight hours until both Sam and Bucky were meant to show up, which left him plenty of time to try and get some work done. As he brushed his teeth, he considered maybe going to visit his mom, but he knew he had to work on his portfolio as well as his comic. He had an update scheduled for tomorrow, and he had a few applications ready to be sent in that just needed a completed portfolio to go along with them.

So far, he had five out of the eight pieces needed for his portfolio and he had the last three in various states of progress. They each had to show his skills in different ways and he’d already trashed at least ten ideas that seemed too repetitive or boring. It had been when he’d still been going to college when he decided to try out for jobs in animation and comics when he got out. So far, he’d had no luck, but he had a few close calls already.

If he was being honest, he couldn’t decide on whether his dream was to work for a comic book company or an animation studio; so he figured, why not try out for both?

Eating and checking his email took about an hour, and then he jumped in the shower and changed into a new pair of pajama bottoms and a tank top since he still had quite a lot of time before anyone was meant to show up. And with all of that done, he knew that he now needed to actually get some proper work done.

Settling into his desk chair and pulling up his program and his tablet, he stared at the half-finished piece and sighed. It felt as if he was going in the complete wrong direction with it, even as he started adding in the next few lines, but he didn’t have a clue about how to fix it.

Instead of beating himself up about it, he began working on his comic instead. He had two pages to finish so that he would be caught up on being ahead of schedule. It sometimes helped that he actually resorted to drawing when he was bored, meaning that he got a hell of a lot more work done when he wasn’t even trying. It took approximately an hour to finish the rough draft of the first page, and after that he picked up his sketchbook instead and tried out a few concept sketches as they came to him.

After a while, he found himself then doodling things that had nothing to do with his comic or his portfolio at all. Somehow his subject ended up mostly being Bucky; both as Steve remembered him and as he was now.

He drew small portraits, large side-shots, a range of emotions, and even a full page professional-grade portrait all from memory.

By the time he heard a knock at his front door just past five thirty, he had two sketchbook pages full of Bucky, as well as a few small sketches of Sam, Riley and his mom all scattered in together on a third page. Looking up at the clock, his brow furrowed in confusion. He’d only just called the pizza order in ten minutes ago, so it must have been a slow night tonight for them to already be at his door.

Shuffling over to the door in his slippers, still only wearing his pajama bottoms and a thin tank top, he opened up the door and grabbed his wallet from the table beside it with a pleasant smile on his face. A pleasant smile which immediately changed with a surprised gasp as he saw that it was Bucky, not the pizza guy.

“Buck! Hey!” he exclaimed, shifting on his feet as he then tried to hide behind his front door as subtly as he could manage, which honestly wasn’t very subtle at all. “You’re early.”

“Am I?” he replied, looking down at his watch as he pulled out his phone with his other hand and double checked the time on the screen. “Huh. Guess my watch stopped. Should I come back or—“

“No! No, of course not, it’s fine. Come on in,” Steve told him quickly, stepping aside and letting him in. “Sorry about my pajamas, I didn’t bother getting dressed yet.”

“You were planning on actually dressing when we got here?” Bucky asked as he let his eyes wander around Steve’s apartment, getting a feel for the place and peering around here and there to see where everything was.

“Well, yeah, I mean. I don’t usually when it’s just me and Sam, but I figured it might be better to actually wear something other than pajamas since it’s not just two of us this time.”

“Aw, gonna dress up for little ‘ol me, huh?”

“Not when you say it like that, I won’t.”

Grinning, Bucky toed off his shoes by the door and began wandering further into Steve’s apartment, hands pushed into the pockets of his jeans. Steve himself had the presence of mind to lock the door behind him and then pull his pants up enough so that they weren’t practically falling off of his thin hips before following Bucky into the living room.

“Nice place. Basically the same set-up as mine. You’ve got a hell of a lot less boxes piling up everywhere though,” he told him, Steve nodding in understanding.

“Yeah, well, they tend to disappear when you’ve lived in the same place for a full year and a half.” As he spoke, he noticed that Bucky had wandered over to his desk, peering down at the surface of it where his sketchbook was still lying flat and wide open.

In a fit of panic, Steve ran over and snatched up his book and snapped it shut, hopefully well before Bucky could get a good look at it. For his troubles, he received a blank look that shifted slowly into something much more amused than annoyed or confused.

“Been drawing porn or somethin’, Stevie?” he asked with a smirk.

“What?!” he asked, astonished at such an accusation, a blush immediately creeping up his neck and making his cheeks and his ears turn as bright red as a tomato. A nervous smile firmly fixed on his lips and he reached up to fix his glasses while he hugged the sketchbook to his chest. “No! I haven’t been drawing _porn_ , jesus, Buck. They’re just sketches, they don’t even—god.”

The brunet just laughed and nudged Steve’s shoulder just hard enough to make him wobble off-balance a bit. “Chill out, I was just fuckin’ with ya.”

That being said, Bucky abandoned the area by Steve’s desk and instead picked a spot on the lumpy couch and flopped down with a sigh as he stretched out. If Steve wasn’t in the mood to share his drawings – raunchy or otherwise – then that was fine with him. As he got settled, Steve pulled open the desk drawer and shoved his book inside, snapping the drawer closed a bit harder than he had meant to.

“You know, even if I _was_ drawing porn, it’d be better than anything _you_ could ever draw,” he gloated as he made his way over to the couch to flop down right beside Buck. He took his friend’s lead and stretched his own legs out in front of him, the difference in their height clear as Bucky’s heels rested well inside the edge of the rectangular rug in front of the couch, while Steve’s only rested just inside the edge.

They had matching positions; necks craned just enough to press their heads against the back of the couch, hands clasped over each of their stomachs, legs outstretched as far as they could go. Seeing that Steve had copied him, Bucky shifted his head so that he could look over at Steve with a challenging stare as he slid further down the couch, making his feet reach even further. Steve, of course, copied him, leading to his ass practically hanging off of the edge of the couch just so that he could reach farther.

“Of course it’d be better than whatever I could draw, idiot. I’m not an artist, let alone one that’s bound to be world-famous,” Bucky told him with a purely shit-eating grin as he watched Steve almost slip off of the couch.

“I’m not _that_ good,” he protested, scrunching his face up both because of how far he was trying to stretch, as well as because of the high praise Bucky was trying to give him. “You haven’t even seen my art since you’ve been back, asshole.”

“Don’t need to. I know you’re still the best.”

Just as Steve started to retort again, a sharp knock on his front door had him finally falling off the couch with a dull _thud_ and a yelp, Bucky’s laughter immediately following as Steve scrambled to his feet and ran to the door. This time it was the pizza guy and he forked over the cash for a tip and signed the receipt while balancing the pizzas on one hand.

The weight of the pizzas suddenly left his hand and he gasped, thinking he’d dropped them, only to whip his head around and see Bucky carrying them into the kitchen for him.

“Christ, don’t do that,” he shouted at him, turning back around to give the delivery guy a sheepish smile as he finished signing his name and handed him the pen and paper back with one final thank-you before shutting the door.

“Is this one vegetarian or something?” Bucky asked, nose scrunched up as he peered down into one of the two pizza boxes.

“Yeah. The other one’s Hawaiian. Sam’s on a diet, so the veggie one’s for him.”

“Not much of a diet if it’s just vegetables on a pizza.”

“I know, but pizza’s like, the only thing he won’t give up. So it’s sort of a compromise.”

“Okay then, Hawaiian it is,” he said with a shrug, closing the box again and instead walking over to inspect what Steve had in his fridge.

“We’re gonna be ordering Chinese too, later on, probably between the movies,” he explained, leaning against the counter while he watched Bucky searching his fridge. “I hope that your favorite soda is still what it used to be.”

“Oh, uh,” the brunet said, staring at the three different brands in the fridge, “Yeah, I mean, I don’t really have much of a preference, I guess.”

“You don’t?” Glancing over his shoulder, Bucky could see that Steve was definitely shocked by that answer. Not knowing how else to answer, he just grabbed a Sprite, watching as Steve blinked at him, confused.

“You wanted one, didn’t you?” he asked, quickly handing Steve the can before looking into the fridge again and grabbing a Coke for himself instead. That choice got a less surprised reaction from the blond.

“Yeah, thanks,” he took the can and cracked it open, sipping at it slowly. There was a hint of suspicion lingering in Steve’s gaze as he watched Bucky pull the tab open of his own soda, but he didn’t say anything else about it.

The Bucky that he knew drank Coke religiously. He wouldn’t drink any other type of soda, even if he was paid for it. The only exception to the rule was root beer, specifically for floats, but even then it was pushing it. Classic Coke was Bucky’s drink. Hearing that he no longer had a preference was, quite frankly, strange. He had remembered that Steve’s favorite was Sprite, though, so that was something. The only other soda inside of the fridge was Mountain Dew, which was Sam’s preferred drink that he kept on hand for whenever he came over.

As Steve pondered this new version of Bucky, they both stood in his kitchen and sipped at their respective drinks. The silence began to stretch and feel more awkward than anything else, so Steve cleared his throat and set his soda down.

“So, where have you been the last few years? What have you been up to?”

“Mostly just travelling, I guess.”

“Travelling? Like, where to?”

“Ah, I went to Russia for a while. Germany, too. France, England, all the major stops you’d think to go to over in Europe,” he answered with a shrug, setting his pop down to scratch absently at his left arm, pushing the sleeve of his shirt up just enough to show the edge of the tattoo there again.

“Really? What were you doing over there?”

“Uh, well,” Bucky let out a deep sigh, and then crossing his arms over his chest, “I was backpacking. I didn’t use much money. Just sort of went places.”

“Isn’t that like, super hard to do now that it’s not the fuckin’ nineties anymore?” Steve asked with a snort and a grin.

“You know what; it is. But, if you know how to get around a few laws every now and then, sneak past checkpoints, it becomes a _hell_ of a lot easier,” Bucky said with a smirk and Steve just gasped.

“Oh my god, you _are_ a criminal.”

“Well, don’t go _telling_ everyone.”

“Holy shit, Buck.”

“Yeah, but that’s nothing. I decided to join a crime organization, too. I’m one of their best smugglers, you know. And I’m an assassin on the side. You’ve got a deadly criminal standing right here in your kitchen,” he whispered, glancing around as if checking for any bugs on Steve’s walls.

For a moment, Steve looked shocked, searching Bucky’s face to see if he was being honest or not. Considering he hadn’t seen or heard from his friend in so long, well, it could have actually been possible, right? Maybe he was exaggerating a bit, but hell, what if he _was_ a spy? In the end, what gave it away was the hint of a grin pulling at his friend’s lips.

“Oh _ha ha_ , very funny. If you didn’t want to tell me, you just had to say so, _jerk_.”

Bucky just let out a cheerful laugh and brought his soda up to his lips again to take a large sip, still smiling as he pulled it away and shook his head. “You have to admit, I _almost_ got you.”

“Yeah right, like _you_ could be a smuggler or an assassin _._ You couldn’t even hide from Mrs. Mackie in fourth grade when we set the class frog loose in the hallway.”

“Wasn’t that your idea?”

“Of course it was, but your stupid giggling was what got us caught red handed and huddled together in the broom closet. _That_ part was your idea. Idiot.”

The both of them laughed together just as another knock sounded at the door and Steve made his way over to let Sam inside, still grinning as he came in, movie in hand. Right on time, just like every other week, Sam was there at six on the dot.

“I honestly still don’t know how you haven’t seen Independence Day yet. It’s based on your own goddamn birthday, Rogers,” Sam told him, shaking his head as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the hook beside Steve’s door.

“If I had, you wouldn’t have a movie to show me tonight, though.”

“Oh _yes_ I would. Did you just completely block out the nineties and early two-thousands, man? How have you not seen so many damn movies?”

“I haven’t seen it either,” Bucky interjected, making Sam jump and whirl around to see Bucky standing in the doorway of the kitchen, Sam’s hand over his heart.

_“Jesus Christ,_ how long have you been standing there?”

“First of all, the name’s Bucky Barnes, but I’m flattered you’d confuse me with such a famous guy,” two pairs of eyes rolled dramatically at that, “And Secondly, the whole time.”

“Why did I not know that you were going to be here?”

“Ask Steve.”

The both of them looked at the blond expectantly and Steve reached up to mess with his glasses instead of meeting either of their eyes. He mumbled an explanation under his breath and Sam just laughed.

“Whatever man, it’s cool. Glad you could make it, Barnes.”

“Yeah. Pizza’s here already.”

“Great, I’m starving.”

The three of them grabbed their drinks and pizza and all gathered together on Steve’s lumpy couch. To feel more relaxed, as well as more like a part of the group, Bucky ended up stripping out of his shirt and leaving it over the back of the couch. It wasn’t much different from how Sam and Steve were both dressed, Steve still in his pajamas and Sam in some loose track pants and a tank top.

Honestly, Steve would have been lying if he said he hadn’t been distracted through part of the movie when Bucky first stripped out of his shirt. His chest was muscular, as he had been able to tell when he ran into it the other day, but it was also scarred. He had white lines of healed skin here and there, some looking more serious than others, but all of them had Steve even more curious about where Bucky had been all this time.

On top of his physique and the scarring along his chest, Steve’s eyes were also drawn to the tattoo on Bucky’s left arm. Unlike Steve’s own tattoos that were dark black lines, curving and flowing all the way up and down his arms and spreading up onto his back and chest like roots, Bucky had just the singular tattoo on his upper arm. It was a deep red star, the color of it resembling a crimson, almost blood rather than ink.

Even in the dark, Steve could see that it wasn’t just a solid design as he’d first thought, but it had hundreds of tiny curves and lines within it, so close together that it looked solid from far away. But past seeing that it wasn’t a solid shape, Steve couldn’t make out any of the small details in the darkness of his living room.

Eventually, Bucky noticed him staring and he nudged at him and nodded at the screen, silently telling him to place his focus back onto the movie. Which was probably for the best, seeing as the plot started picking up a bit faster once he finally started actually paying attention.

The credits began rolling and Bucky shifted and began to say something, but he was quickly interrupted by Sam waving a hand at him and pressing a finger to his lips. At first, he wasn’t at all sure as to why, until Steve spoke.

“Okay, _why_ wasn’t this movie just focused on Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum and their partners the whole time? I mean, the aliens were neat, but _come on_! They were the _best_ part!” he exclaimed, gesturing wildly at the television as the credits continued to roll. “They should have their own movie together. They could carry a movie by themselves!”

Bucky and Sam both bit their lips and just let Steve rant at the screen for a few long minutes until he finally got it all out of his system and fell back against the couch with a sigh. He rubbed at his eyes under his glasses and Sam just patted him on the shoulder before grabbing his phone.

“Who wants Chinese?”

Getting their orders squared away was the next step, Sam then calling it in while Steve and Bucky both stood up and went to grab another drink for each of them. They all chatted a bit while waiting for their order to arrive, Steve keeping busy while he set up the next movie.

“Can you believe Sam hasn’t seen any of Charlie Chaplain’s films?”

“No way. You haven’t seen Chaplain’s films?”

“I _have_ , thanks to Steve. We’ve watched one every week since he found out.”

“That’s because it’s a _crime_. Charlie Chaplain was an amazing, brilliant man who is one of my personal favorites.”

“Well, just because you have a crush on him, Rogers—“

“I don’t have a _crush_ on Charlie Chaplain.”

“He totally does.”

“Yeah, you know what; I think I have to agree with you on that.”

Sam and Bucky laughed together while Steve rolled his eyes at them, doing his best to ignore them in favor of setting up the movie. He had the DVD compilation of all of his films, one of his most prized possessions besides his record collection and his growing Disney collection.

Their food arrived soon after and Sam went to get it and sign the slip, Bucky taking the bag from him and scaring him almost as badly as Steve had been earlier on, prompting Sam to yell at him that he was going to get the brunet a bell. Settling in again was easier than the first time and they all ate out of their individual containers as they watched the film, Steve being the first to laugh every time the Little Tramp did something hilarious.

The best part about the night was that Steve clearly remembered watching things like this with Bucky when they were younger and he’d found a few old tapes in his grandparent’s attic when his gran passed. They had multiple sleepovers when they were young, bouncing between their houses, even sometimes one night after another, staying up as late as they could manage before falling asleep together in a pile of blankets and pillows.

It would have been a pipe dream to believe that he would be able to do anything similar to that with Bucky ever again until now. Now, when they were curled up on the couch beside each other, Steve between Sam and Bucky, all of them happily eating their Chinese food and laughing at all the right parts of the movie.

By the time it had finished, Steve was still grinning wide enough to split his face in half, even as Sam got up and stretched while yawning through an excuse as to why he had to be up early the next morning.

They all said their goodbyes and Sam left with a charming smile and a promise to see Bucky again sometime soon, leaving Steve alone with Bucky again as they began cleaning up Steve’s apartment.

“You don’t have to, really, it’s okay,” Steve told him quickly as he watched Bucky begin gathering up the half-full Chinese food containers.

“Hey, I helped make the mess. It’s only fair I help clean it up, right?”

“But I honestly can do it myself.”

“I’m not saying you can’t. I’m just saying that you don’t have to do it all on your own. Got it?”

Sighing, Steve nodded and admitted defeat, instead focusing on gathering up the blankets and pillows and putting them all away in his hall closet while Bucky cleared away the food containers and cans that littered the living room. It had, overall, been a really great night. Steve took a moment to himself in the hall once he’d shoved all of the blankets back inside the small space where they were meant to be, just letting the feeling of joy fill up his chest and let it expand.

“Hey, do you recycle?” Bucky called, clearly looking around for the correct bin to throw things in and effectively drawing Steve back into the kitchen instead of just letting him linger in the hall.

“Yeah, here,” he said easily, showing him where everything was and joining in the effort to clean things up so that it wasn’t nearly as messy as it had been when Sam left. Once they had both finished to their liking, they sat next to one another on Steve’s couch again, Bucky taking a moment to pull his shirt back on over his head.

“So. What’cha think?” Steve asked, pulling his legs up and wrapping his arms around himself so that he could press his cheek to his knees with a grin as he looked up at Bucky.

“About what? The movies or the night in general?”

“In general. Didja have fun? Was it enough to make us even again?”

“Even?” he asked brow furrowed in confusion until he remembered Steve’s inane need for them to be even about owing each other things. “Oh, even. Yeah, I’d say that makes us even. It was fun. I’m glad Sam’s making sure you’re getting caught up on movies you missed out on.”

“You say that as if you weren’t just as deprived as I was as a kid.”

“Hey, at least I had a TV that worked. Not to mention my Super Nintendo. You loved that thing.”

Steve chuckled and nodded, remembering the nights they spent at Bucky’s house, playing the video game system late into the night with the volume muted. Their hands covered each other’s lips whenever one of them felt the need to shout at one another or at the game itself, not wanting to alert either of Bucky’s parents that they were still awake, nor did they want to wake Bucky’s baby sister.

“Well,” Bucky said with a sigh as he stood up and stretched, “I should probably go too.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks for coming tonight.”

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I come?”

“I dunno. Just thanks. Don’t make me regret inviting you now.”

“It’s a bit late to un-invite me.”

“Too late. I just did. Go home, we don’t want you here.”

“Fine, I see how it is.”

Steve just grinned and followed Bucky to the door, leaning against the frame of it while he watched Bucky walk across the hall to his own apartment. He absently chewed on his bottom lip, considering whether or not he should say anything else before they parted ways completely.

“Oh, Buck?” he piped up, internally cursing himself for even saying anything. Why, though? It was just Bucky.

“Yeah?” The brunet turned his door already open and he was standing in the frame of it, much like Steve was. Mirroring each other again.

“Do you wanna hang out tomorrow? I mean, it’s fine if you don’t or if you’re busy, but I was just thinking it might be fun. You know, like old times, just the two of us.”

A slow smile pulled at Bucky’s lips and he reached up to rub at his chin, eyes downcast as he thought it over, most likely checking his mental schedule again.

“I’d like that. _But_ I’m working a split shift tomorrow, and my hours are all fucked up until the end of next week.”

“Oh.” Steve tried not to sound completely crushed and disappointed. It didn’t work. “Yeah, right, _duh_. Should have figured. That’s alright.”

“How about next week, though? Maybe on Friday? I get off earlier next Friday, maybe we could hang out once my shift ends?” Bucky added quickly, hoping that having an alternative would cheer Steve up again.

Steve’s disappointment faded away and he nodded, rubbing at his upper arm and giving the brunet a crooked smile.

“Yeah, that sounds great. Where do you work?”

“The Journeys on Fulton. We could hang out around there once I get off at four. I have to wait to pick up my check at five anyway, and I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“That actually sounds really great.”

“It’s a date then.”

The way Bucky said it made Steve pause for a moment, wondering the meaning behind his words. They’d always just been friends, even long-distance ones up until this point, seeing as Steve never believed that their connection had ever completely broken. He could have meant it just as a friendly date, just a way to say that they had a plan. Or, he could have meant something more. Either way, now wasn’t the time to dwell on it, so he just smiled and nodded.

“Yeah. A date. I can’t wait.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a date! Bonding ensues, as well as meeting some new faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can follow me on [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) or find out about my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there.  
> Beta'd by the wonderful [lotus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lotus) and [Shilo](http://spoiledrogers.tumblr.com).
> 
> Please check the tags, as they have been updated!

“S _o_ ,” he began, drawing out the ‘o’ as he glanced around the store slowly, “Journeys, huh?”

“Y _ep_ , Journeys,” the brunet replied as he bent to pick up a stack of shoeboxes, sighing as he stood up straight and carried them towards the nearest display. Steve followed close behind, hands in his pockets and glasses pushed far up on the bridge of his nose.

“Seems a bit…” he paused, chewing on his lip as he searched for the right word, “I dunno, _mainstream_ for you.”

“Because you should know, right, Mister Hipster?”

“That’s not—“

“Hey, a job’s a job. If I were desperate, you’d probably be able to find me workin’ back alleys and street corners,” Bucky pointed out, reaching up to push his hair behind his ear for what had to have been the tenth time since Steve had arrived. He’d taken to pulling it back into a part-ponytail part-bun with both sides of his head shaved against his scalp now. It suited him, but part of the shorter strands of his hair weren’t quite long enough just yet to stay in the hair tie.

“Thank god you’re not desperate. You’d get nowhere like that,” Steve jabbed, getting a scoff in return. “It’s just,” he pulled his hands out of his pockets and instead clasped them together behind his back as he followed Bucky around the corner and down the next aisle. “Never thought of you as someone to work in a _Journeys_. Selling _shoes,_ of all things.”

“Someone’s gotta do it,” he remarked, shooting a grin over his shoulder as he caught Steve’s eye, turning back to the shelf to adjust the new price tags he was attaching.

“Yeah, but does it have to be _you_ right _now_? You said you were gonna be off by now.” A quick glance at his watch told him that it was five minutes past when Bucky had been meant to clock out. And yet there they were. Bucky with a stack of shoeboxes in his arms, his coworker milling about behind the counter ever since he’d gotten there three minutes ago, and Steve following Bucky like a puppy.

“Not my fault you distracted me when you got here.”

Steve blew out a long breath and didn’t reply, because that was technically true. But he wasn’t going to give the brunet the satisfaction that would come with an affirmative answer. It wasn’t that he had meant to distract Bucky from his work; he had just been so excited that he’d immediately launched into telling him all about what had happened since the last time they’d seen one another.

The blond had, to the chagrin of everyone that knew him, gotten into another fight in a back alley. He had been on his way to meet Sam at the gym for a boxing lesson – something that Bucky had supported one hundred percent and had even offered to join in when he could – and had been stopped by the sound of a scuffle. Now, Steve had never been one to pass up the opportunity to help out, or skip over a fight if it was for a good cause. In his opinion, bullies needed to be reminded that they couldn’t boss everyone around.

The exchange – involving three guys who were harassing a boy even thinner than Steve and calling him horrible names – had left the blond with a fading bruise on his left cheek, the dark half-circle of a bruise under his right eye, a cut on his eyebrow, and the skin of his knuckles torn open. Bucky, who hadn’t seen Steve for the past three days, had immediately gotten ready to yell at him. But Steve had beaten him to the punch and launched into a very long explanation before the brunet could even say hello.

“I’ll be done soon, just hang on,” Bucky told him with a chuckle, turning away as Steve began to inspect the displays that he’d already straightened up and re-priced.

Squinting at one pair, Steve frowned and shuffled closer since the replacement pair of glasses he had found in his desk drawer – which were at least two years old – had an older prescription on the lenses as well. While he could see well enough, words were blurring around the edges and everything seemed to have a fuzzy outline.

And though the prescription was different, the frames were almost identical to his other set of squared wide-rims. Thinking on it now, he wondered if he should consider changing things up when he went in to get his current pair replaced.

It was only because of the fight that he even needed new glasses, seeing as they’d gotten scratched all to hell when they’d fallen off. Of course, that had been after they’d been punched with one of the idiot’s bare knuckles and gotten cracked.

All he had to say on the subject was thank god his medical insurance would cover the cost for eye care and all that came with it.

While he was browsing the shelves, one pair of shoes caught his eye and Steve chewed on his lip, wondering if he could afford to buy new shoes. They were a nice clean color blue, with high tops that could be either laced completely or left loose. Steve had pretty big feet for being the slip of a thing that he was, and they actually had his size in stock. He could tell just by pushing his fingers inside that they would be roomy enough to put in his custom inserts so that he could still get the support and comfort his feet required.

Honestly, they were pretty perfect for him, even though they were nothing like what he usually wore. For the most part, it was thrift store finds for Steve when it came to shoes, since the only things that mattered most of the time were his arch support inserts.

But _jeez_ the price was ridiculous.

Sure, he could have maybe found a different pair, maybe even in the discount section tucked into the back. In fact, he shouldn’t have even stopped to look since what he _should_ do is just go back to the thrift shop down the way to find a pair there. It was cheaper, and it was much more practical.

But the last time he’d been able to buy new shoes – truly _new_ shoes, tags still on, fresh from the factory box they’d come in – had been years ago. Before his mom got sick, when she was still working and when Steve was getting ready to start his freshman year at college. Everything had been better then; financially, physically, and emotionally.

“Like those?” Bucky asked, suddenly at his side again, his hands free of boxes and his nametag gone, signifying that he was done for the day.

“Yeah, they’re neat,” he agreed, shrugging as if it was no big deal.

“The blue’s a nice color. Are these your size?”

“Mmhm. I’m a little hard to fit, though.”

“Try ‘em on.”

“Buck, no.”

“Why not?”

Steve just huffed, not entirely wanting to say that his reason for not wanting to try them on was a mixture of not wanting to mess them up, as well as not being entirely sure that he could be trusted to not just walk right out of the store with them still on. He couldn’t say that, at least not with Bucky’s coworker hovering nearby as he worked. Bucky apparently took his silence for some kind of answer anyway since he picked up the box and handed it to Steve.

“Go on then.”

The blond dropped to the floor with a huff and pulled off his shoes, still scowling at being bossed around. He was tempted to just try them on without putting his arch inserts in, just so that he could complain that they didn’t fit and Bucky would drop it, but his own desire for the shoes got the better of him. They were easy enough to slide on once the inserts were in place, but that wasn’t all that surprising since they were his size. What was somewhat surprising was that they felt good when he had them on and stood up, taking a few steps and getting a feel for them.

Of course, it would take time to break them in completely, but they were the most comfortable shoes he’d tried on in years. They didn’t pinch at his toes or his heels; there was even some extra room in front. He had left the laces low, so the tops hung open loose around his ankles, but they felt good. Just tight enough so that they wouldn’t fall off unless he broke into a sprint, which he could honestly say he wasn’t planning on doing any time soon.

“Well?” Bucky asked, nudging Steve with his elbow to get his attention away from the shoes and back onto him. “How do they fit?”

“Goddamn,” Steve breathed, chuckling as he turned this way and that once he’d caught his reflection in the closest mirror. “They feel good. Really good.”

“Alright,” was all the brunet said before swiping the box from where Steve had left it on the floor, his old shoes tucked safely inside. Bucky made his way to the register with the box with Steve close behind, immediately fussing over the fact that Bucky was clearly planning on buying him those shoes.

“Hey, c’mon, don’t. I _have_ shoes.”

“Except that I’ve got an employee discount and you clearly need new ones,” he retorted, opening up the box and casting a very pointed look down at the old shoes in question.

“Bucky, I don’t have enough to pay you back.”

“Then buy me dinner and we’ll call it even.”

For an agonizingly long minute and a half, Steve went back and forth about protesting or just giving in and letting Bucky buy him the shoes. It was true, he did need new ones. The inserts were new enough to not be an issue, but his sneakers themselves were pretty beat up. The colors had faded down into a dull grey from the crisp white and black they had once been and the material was scuffed and fraying around the edges. Rocks stuck in the bottoms of the heels and rattled every time he took a step. Not to mention that he had no way of knowing if he’d be able to replace them when they finally gave out on him.

Besides, the blue ones fit so well, it would be a shame to take them off now.

“Fine! But I’m buying dinner,” he decided with a huff. Food, he was fine spending money on, no matter how much it was. Food was important; but shoes? It would be a cold day in hell the day Steve Rogers dropped more than ten bucks on a pair of shoes for himself. But the brunet was willing to buy them for him, even willing to give him the employee discount. Well, how could he say no to that?

The transaction was done before Steve could change his mind and Bucky slid the box into a plastic bag and handed it to him by the handles. With that done, the brunet rounded the counter with a wave to his coworker and he joined Steve with a grin.

“Hey kid, where’d you get those nice new kicks?” Bucky asked him, throwing his arm over Steve’s shoulder.

“Some punk just up and bought ‘em for me. Awfully sweet of him, don’t you think?”

“Definitely sweet. He sounds like a damn good guy. You better buy him dinner or something to pay him back.”

Steve laughed and shoved at his side, making Bucky sway off-balance before leaning back into him with most of his weight on Steve’s shoulders. The extra weight from Bucky almost made Steve’s knees buckle, but he managed to plant his feet and shove at him so that he instead went stumbling forward.

They both laughed their way out the door and spilled out onto the sidewalk side by side, quickly slipping into the stream of people.

“Damn, those training days with Sam are starting to pay off,” Bucky told him, reaching for Steve’s arm, his palm warm against Steve’s skin as he wrapped his fingers around his bicep. His muscles were, as always, next to nonexistent underneath his skin, but Bucky nodded when he felt at his arm. “Yep, you’re definitely building muscle, Stevie.”

“You think so?” he asked, glancing down at his own arm and flexing. He didn’t really see much of a difference at all; just his same old thin, ink-stained arms as usual. Bucky’s fingers could completely loop around his bicep which was most likely a combination of Steve’s thinness and the fact that Bucky had long, pianist’s fingers.

“’Course. Now, let’s go eat already, I’m starving.” Bucky let go in order to loop his arm over the blonds’ shoulders and pull Steve closer to him than he had been before.

Walking together and keeping close, they made their way down the street, pointing out different restaurants that they passed along the way. The places in question were all dismissed by either an indifferent shrug or a scrunch of a nose and a shake of the head.

Eventually, they both decided that Chipotle sounded good and they sat at an outside table once they had ordered and began settling in. It was a nice day and it felt more private with the open air of the city around them, as strange as that may sound. Confined spaces meant prying eyes and ears, while outside it was just them and the city.

Their conversation stayed light and playful, making casual jokes or jabs at one another. It was so easy for Steve to fall back into sync with Bucky, like trying on an old coat again after a long summer.

“So, when did you get back to Brooklyn?” Steve asked after taking a sip of his soda and leaning back in his chair, already halfway done with his meal.

“A few months ago, actually. I was living in a hole in the wall apartment with one of my friends who came back with me at first. We met overseas, both decided it was time to head back to the states, and Brooklyn just seemed like as good a place as any to end up.” With a shrug, he took another bite and gestured at Steve. “Wha’ ‘bout you?” he asked with his mouth full.

“Me?” Steve blinked, confused. “Buck, I haven’t been out of the state since we went to Disney World when I was twelve. Hell, I don’t leave Brooklyn all that often.”

“Seriously? What have you been doing all this time?”

“Well, I mean, I went to college for four years. Graduated as an art major and didn’t bother with graduate school; too expensive and just not worth it. I’ve had a few good jobs, but nothing career-worthy. I’ve mostly just always been in between one job to the next ever since I graduated,” he shrugged and poked at his food, eating a few bites absently. “I run a web comic for fun and a bit of cash, go to interviews or job fairs whenever I can.”

Looking up to meet Bucky’s eyes, Steve saw that his friend had what could only be called an incredulous expression on his face, his eyes wide and surprised. The blond froze like a deer in the headlights, not at all sure what had set off such a reaction from his friend. He reached up with one hand to cover his lips, wondering if it was something wrong with his appearance.

“What? Is there food in my teeth?”

“You’re an unemployed art major with a web comic.”

“Uh,” he paused, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, “Yeah?”

Bucky just shook his head, his chin on his hand as he smirked at Steve. “I can’t believe it. You are a goddamn walking cliché.”

That was it? That was the reason for Bucky making such a fuss? The blond just barely held back the urge to roll his eyes, opting to cross his arms over his chest instead.  

“So every twenty-something year old walking around New York has all the same medical conditions as me, huh? Or is it just that because I’m a young artist without a job, that makes me just like everyone else? That makes me a ‘hipster’?” Steve asked, the questions coming out a bit more biting and harsh than he had intended. He wasn’t angry with Bucky, but it was definitely frustrating to be lumped into a type or a cliché just because of his situation. Honestly, he could expect that to be what a stranger might think of him, but this was _Bucky_.

Drawing back as if he’d been physically slapped, Bucky’s expression softened and he raised his hands up in surrender. Whether it was from Steve’s tone or that he’d realized exactly what he’d said, something got through his skull and he knew he’d taken it too far.

“Okay, I get it, I’m sorry. You’re not a walking cliché. You’re just very…” he trailed off, not knowing how to describe his friend other than what he’d already called him. Brows furrowed, he snapped his lips shut when Steve just sighed and rubbed at his forehead.

“How about we do away with titles? I don’t call myself a hipster, I’m sure you don’t call yourself a punk, let’s just leave it.”

That was probably for the best and so Bucky just nodded and decided to drop it then and there. That is, until he realized that Steve had called him a punk. The phrase wasn’t new between them, per se, as they both used it in regards to one another casually, but with the way Steve had been referring to it now he could tell that he meant Punk instead of just punk.

“Wait, what? You think I’m trying to be punk?”

“Well, yeah. I mean—“ Steve cut himself off and frowned, realizing that he’d done exactly the same thing as Bucky had done to him. Nothing about Bucky had ever actually confirmed Steve’s initial suspicions of his friend having turned toward the punk lifestyle; he had just begun thinking of him as a punk due to a snap judgment. “Okay, yeah, we’re going to do away with the stupid labels entirely.”

They both fell quiet for a few minutes, absently picking at their food until the air between them felt thick and awkward. Bucky was the one to break the silence, clearing his throat and gently nudging at Steve’s foot with his own.

“So, what made you think I was a punk?” he asked, wide grin spread across his face with his chin in his hand again. It wasn’t that he had minded at all and he wanted to make sure that Steve knew that. Now, he was just curious.

“You really want to know?” he asked with a sigh, sitting back with his drink in hand as he shoved his now empty bowl more towards the middle of their table.

“Yeah, spill it.”

Steve shifted in his seat and reached up to adjust his glasses, crossing and uncrossing his ankles underneath the table as he sipped at his drink. Then, he planted his feet again and sat back, head tilted to the side as he smirked. “Okay, well, it was mostly just your hair.”

“My hair is punk?”

“Not…really? I guess it’s just the style. It’s like, punk rock-ish. I guess.” He paused, thinking it over, his brow furrowing as he realized that it wasn’t much to go on. “You know what, I don’t even know what ‘punk’ is anymore.”

“Oh, no, you know what? Not knowing what punk is, that’s _totally_ punk.”

“Fuck off.”

“Wow, Steve. You’re _so_ punk.”

Steve kicked at him under the table, managing to land a hit square on Bucky’s shin, making him cry out in pain, grabbing for the afflicted area to keep him from kicking at him again but laughing all the same.  

“You’re such an ass sometimes.”

“Yeah, but you _like_ it.”

“Shut up, let’s go.”

They cleared away their table and fell back into step with the crowd, making their way back to Journeys so that Bucky could pick up his pay check. This time, they were in and out of the shop within two minutes, the brunet’s pay in hand as he left and stuffed it into his wallet. They then lingering just outside of the doors while they figured out where to go next huddled close together to stay out of the way of the rushing stream of people.

“There’s the Apple store,” Bucky suggested, getting an immediate scoff in return from Steve.

“First of all, I’ve got a PC. Secondly, I could barely afford the one that I have, why would I want to go look at everything that I can’t buy?”

“I dunno, I mean, does anyone even go to an Apple store to buy shit?”

“How about we just go somewhere else?”

“Fine, you got any bright ideas?”

Steve was tempted to suggest the art supply store that was a few blocks away, but he knew that it wasn’t exactly practical seeing as he had no money to spend. All of what he had on him had gone to paying for dinner and he was still waiting for his last deposit to go through in his bank. So if they went now, it would only end up being an act of torture with what Steve wanted so close and yet so far away.

Besides that, he was meant to have an interview there coming up, so long as things went well. The last thing he wanted to do was blow his chances early by coming in and practically begging for the job.

“Well, there’s a Barnes & Noble down that way,” Steve suggested with a shrug, looking up to Bucky to gauge his reaction.

While he’d been thinking, Bucky had been reorganizing things in his wallet and he ended up pulling a Starbucks gift card out from the back where it had been forgotten about until now. A grin stretched across his face as he held up the green and white card in front of Steve’s face.

“How about Starbucks first? There’s one in the Barnes & Noble, anyway.”

“That’d be perfect,” Steve agreed with a grin, reaching up to pluck the card from Bucky’s fingers and he shoved it into his own pocket, then turning on his heel and slipping into the sea of people once more. He heard Bucky shout behind him and take off after him, doing his best to navigate through the crowd to catch up with Steve again before he could lose him.

They wove through the crowd, Bucky finally catching up enough to wind his arm around Steve’s shoulders again when they stopped at the corner.

“How do they feel, by the way?” Bucky asked as he nodded down towards Steve’s feet.

Steve rocked back onto his heels and considered for a moment whether he should tell him the truth. “You just want me to tell you they feel great so that your ego inflates to be the size of a house.”

“Wh _at_ , _no_ ,” the brunet quickly defended, his vowels becoming long and drawn out as he clearly lied, the grin not even partially hidden on his face. “C’mon though, really. How do they feel?”

“They’re good, real comfortable so far,” Steve admitted, adjusting the bag on his forearm as they made their way across the street when the light finally turned. Bucky didn’t reply after that, just fell into step beside him with his arm still draped casually over the blond’s shoulders, his other hand slipped into his pocket.

The bookstore wasn’t far off from where they had been, taking no more than ten minutes for them to walk through the door. They made a beeline for the coffee shop nestled just off to the side of the main entrance and stood in line together as they waited to order.

Even as they stood waiting in line, Bucky still had his arm draped over Steve’s shoulders, neither of them thinking much of it at all. Contact between them wasn’t anything new, seeing as it was normal for them to even share a bed when they were young boys. They just were comfortable touching each other, especially since Steve had always known Bucky’s touch to mean safety and friendship.

Now, he realized, it must have looked more like they were in a relationship to anyone who bothered looking their way. Bucky was keeping pressed to his side and nestled in close while Steve’s arm had wrapped around Bucky’s waist, his fingers dipping into his friend’s pocket.

At one point, after noticing that the soft sound of giggling was from the group of girls directly behind them in line, Steve began wondering about the nature of this date. Honestly, it felt like it could have been either platonic or romantic seeing as their casual jokes and almost-flirting were nothing new for them. Bucky had always been a flirt, even with Steve, and so most of the time his comments just rolled off of the blond’s skin like water. But every now and then, they stuck and wormed their way into his skull, placing that doubt in the depths of his mind.

The main reason for his doubt was that Bucky could – and had done so in the past on numerous occasions – turn away from a girl he’d been chatting up to focusing on Steve instead without even changing the tone of his voice.  Even being only a teenager when he and Bucky had been separated, Steve had known that Bucky’s sexuality was most likely as fluid as a free-flowing stream.

Which wasn’t a problem, seeing as Steve came to realize in time that his own was very much the same as Bucky’s; or he assumed they had to be at least close to one another on the spectrum.

The fact of the matter was that, due to their casual flirting, Bucky’s liberal use of the word ‘date’, as well as their body language, Steve wasn’t entirely sure where they stood on the line between platonic and romantic. It most likely was a non-issue for the brunet but it still mattered to Steve enough for him to linger on the subject.

Being pulled out of his thoughts by the barista, Steve ordered after Bucky and they stood together at the pickup station, waiting for their drinks and chatting from there all the way over to a table where they settled in. Just as before at the restaurant, they fell into a comfortable conversation, jumping from one subject to the next with ease as they sipped their coffee.

“Look, I’m just saying, if our priorities were on things other than who’s got the biggest gun, we’d have flying cars by now,” Steve told him, “not to mention free health care and basic human rights for everyone.”

“Yeah, but who says we don’t have flying cars already?”

“I do. I don’t see any around here, do you? If you do, please, point them out.”

“I didn’t mean on the public streets, you dope. There are too many secret government programs going on to count; I’m sure that flying car technology is one of those things.”

Steve rolled his eyes and turned away from Bucky to check the clock on the wall and he almost jumped out of his skin when he did. Instead of the clock, he saw that a red headed woman was standing less than five feet from him with her arms crossed over her chest and a shopping bag hanging from one wrist.

She looked to be around the same age as Steve, maybe a bit older like Bucky was, and she was dressed like she was ready to kick someone’s ass. Her hair, which was a bright, almost unnatural shade of red, was put up in a messy bun at the back of her head that made her look more like a goddess than someone who had just woken up. She was wearing a mid-cut leather jacket, a faded band tee, and skinny jeans that hugged her curves as if they had been tailored to fit her with boots that buckled and reached almost half-way up her calves.

“Um, hi?” Steve choked out, blinking quickly and reminding himself a second too late to not stare. He averted his eyes as soon as he’d gotten a good look at her, turning to Bucky for help. What he was expecting Bucky to do, he couldn’t say, mostly because he wasn’t at all sure why she was standing there practically glaring at him. All he knew was that he needed some help and Bucky was his backup.

His backup, who was currently grinning from ear to ear as he saw the red head and he stood up, immediately stepping forward and enveloping her in a huge hug. They exchanged a few words, or what Steve assumed were words, seeing as he didn’t actually know _Russian_. Speaking of, when the hell had _Bucky_ learned Russian? It sounded as if he was fluent in the language as he spoke to her without even needing to think about it, and last Steve had checked, Bucky had taken Spanish in school with him.

_"Наталья! Я не знал, что вы собираетесь быть в городе на этой неделе."_

_"Мой график были переключены вокруг._ _Это приятно видеть вас, Джеймс."_

Steve awkwardly cleared his throat behind Bucky and raised his hand in greeting when they both turned their attention to him instead of each other. Immediately, Bucky sprang into action, moving from the woman’s side to Steve’s with his hand immediately gripping Steve’s shoulder with a grin firmly in place.

“Natasha, this is Steve. Steve, this is Natasha, the friend I mentioned meeting over in Europe. I was staying with her when I first got back to Brooklyn.”

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Steve told her with a kind smile as he reached out to shake her hand, but the title just made her laugh as she took his hand.

“Just Natasha is fine. It’s good to meet you too. James has told me all about you, actually. In fact, he wouldn’t shut up about you most of the time.” She pulled out one of the empty chairs at their table and sat between them. Steve turned his attention to Bucky with an eyebrow raised and a smirk on his lips. The brunet had a slight tint of red on his cheeks as he turned his eyes down to his coffee, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck.

“Really?” he asked, grinning as he caught Bucky’s eye, “How sweet of him. Even after not seeing me for years, he’s still smitten by my good looks.”

Steve was, of course, joking. Whether Bucky was smitten over anyone or not was something the brunet and the brunet alone knew, seeing as Steve certainly wasn’t aware if he had a crush on anyone. But he knew that if he did like anyone, it almost certainly wasn’t him, and it definitely wasn’t because of his looks that Bucky stuck around.

Bucky quickly avoided the previous conversation by clearing his throat and turning his attention away from Steve and back onto Natasha instead. Still, Steve could see what might have been the hint of a blush on the brunet’s cheeks as he changed the subject.

“So, what are you doing here, Nat?”

“Just finished doing some shopping with Clint. He’s just checking out now, we’re grabbing some coffee before heading back home.” As soon as she explained, a blond man in a rumpled purple shirt approached their table and stood behind Natasha not unlike a bodyguard would. “There you are. Clint, this is Steve. Steve, Clint.”

“Hey, man,” Clint greeted, inclining his head just a bit when he caught Steve’s eye.

“Go get us some coffee, Barton,” she ordered, reaching up to rap her knuckles against his stomach and he went without another word. “Weren’t you working today, Barnes?”

“I was. Steve met up with me when I got off and we just had some dinner. Just gonna do some shopping before we head back,” Bucky explained, sipping at his coffee. “Nothing too big.”

 “Sounds like a date to me,” Natasha said smoothly, glancing between the two of them with a look that made a blush creep onto Bucky’s cheeks again.

The silence stretched out between them for a few long minutes while Bucky fought against his rising blush and Steve sipped at his coffee, looking thoughtful. Natasha just looked in between the two of them before turning to check on Clint at the counter to make sure he wasn’t harassing the barista again about cup sizes.

“I mean, I suppose it is,” the brunet finally said with a shrug as he tapped at the side of his cup. “Nothing wrong with a date between friends, after all.”

Steve watched as Natasha kept her gaze traveling between the constant tapping of Bucky’s fingers and his somewhat flushed face, a curious expression on her face. It was obvious that, although Bucky had been the one to call it a date in the first place, he perhaps wasn’t quite as sure of himself when it was discussed with other people. Maybe because they would get the wrong idea.

They were just friends. Despite the fact that Bucky had bought him his new shoes, and that they had been within arm’s length of one another the entire time. Purely platonic. Nothing more between them.

When Bucky finally looked up from his coffee he met Steve’s eyes and they shared a long look. Steve was surprised to find himself looking at an expression of uncertainty on his best friend’s face. There was something left unspoken between them, he could feel it, but Bucky didn’t seem to be ready to be the one to say it.

The last thing that Steve wanted was for things to be awkward between them, so instead of letting the silence stretch on, he mustered up a smile and kicked gently at Bucky’s shin under the table.

“Yeah right, you just bought me all this stuff to butter me up, didn’t you?” he accused, shaking his head and turning his eyes up to the ceiling with an exasperated expression. “I should have known.”

Their eyes met again and Steve was worried for a split second that Bucky didn’t know that he was joking. As soon as the brunet cracked a smile though, he knew that they were okay. They didn’t have to call it anything just yet, or talk about what it was or what it might be.

“Guess you finally caught on. Thank god I didn’t have to pull out the big guns just to get you to realize it.”

“The ‘big guns’? So, buying me a pair of shoes worth over one hundred dollars doesn’t count as a ‘big gun’ to you?”

“You bought him shoes?” Natasha interrupted, looking down to Steve’s feet when he turned in his chair and held his feet out far enough to let her see. Her eyebrows raised up, clearly impressed, and she nodded. “Nice. I say keep him; even if you don’t want to put out, he’ll probably keep buying you things. James always had it in him to be a Sugar Daddy.”

“You’re a Sugar Daddy?” Clint asked as he handed Natasha her coffee when he finally came back into the conversation.

“He’s Steve’s Sugar Daddy. Check out his shoes,” Natasha prompted as she took her coffee from him and nodded toward Steve’s new shoes. Clint whistled low and he nodded, giving Steve a thumbs up.

“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Bucky told them, waving the two of them away as he stood up and stretched. “Don’t you two have somewhere to be?”

“You’re lucky we do,” Natasha warned, giving him a pointed glare as she sipped at her coffee and stood up. “See you around, Barnes. It was nice to meet you, Steve.”

“You too,” Steve called after them as they left almost as quick as they’d come. He watched them leave the store and turned back to Bucky once they’d disappeared out the door. “Well that was fun.”

“That’s one way to put it,” the brunet told him with a snort. He looked as if he was considering throwing his arm over Steve’s shoulders again, but he opted for pushing his hands into his pockets instead. “Got anything specific in mind you want to look for?”

“Nah, not really. Just a section or two that I usually like to browse through. Wanna split up?”

Bucky hesitated for a moment, as if considering whether or not he really wanted to part from Steve’s side, but he eventually agreed, removing his arm from the blond’s shoulders. “Sure. Meet you when I’m done. I’ll find you, don’t worry.”

Though the store was pretty big, Steve had no doubt in his mind that Bucky would be able to find him if he put his heart into the task. So without another word, they split up; Steve heading towards the arts and crafts section and Bucky heading towards what looked to be the science fiction section.

It was quiet in the art section, as it was tucked into the corner of the store, an area where people mostly came to read or browse their selected books or newspapers in peace. It was the furthest away from the kid’s books, so it was honestly the best place to hide away and enjoy the semi-quiet of the store. Steve preferred to not have to interact with anyone while he browsed, anyway.

As he walked down the first row slowly, another older man appeared at the other end of the aisle, but he seemed just as intent to mind his own business as Steve was. When they made eye contact, Steve gave the other customer a kind smile and a nod before turning back to the shelf, gazing at the different titles. He pulled out a few here and there, flipping through them to see if they would give him any good tips or if they’d be any good to him as a reference.

He honestly didn’t have any money to spend on books, but he didn’t need to pay for writing down titles and authors for his next trip to the library. Sure, he was technically loitering since he had no intention of buying any books today, but hey, what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Engrossed in one of the books he’d pulled from the shelf, Steve didn’t realize that the man had gotten closer to him as he was browsing. The man had to be at least seventy years old, if not older, and he walked with a slight limp. He reminded Steve a little of his late grandpa, squinting behind his huge round glasses as he practically glared at the shelf. When he finally noticed, the man was almost uncomfortably close to him, within an arm’s reach and getting closer by the second. He was clearly looking for something, his eyes hard and determined as he inched along. It seemed that Steve was just in his path with nowhere to go since he’d positioned himself on the floor with his pile of books beside him.

“Um, sir—“ he began, getting caught off when the man suddenly got close enough to trip over him, his hand flying out to grasp Steve’s shoulder as he began to fall. Before he could make contact with the blond, his fall was intercepted by Bucky suddenly appearing and helping the man stand upright again.

“Sorry, sir. You looked like you needed a bit of help. You almost tripped over my friend,” he explained to him, his voice calm and quiet, but the old man was startled beyond help. He was struggling in Bucky’s grasp, eyes wide and wild as he desperately stumbled backwards and hit one of the shelves hard. “Sir?”

Steve quickly pushed himself up at this point, standing beside Bucky with his eyes wide as he watched the man clutch at his chest. “Oh my god, Bucky, I think he’s having a heart attack.”

“Shit,” he cursed, looking flustered as he checked the man over, “Fuck, you’re right. Go, Steve, go get help!” he told him, practically shouting as he gestured for Steve to run. The blond did just that, almost sprinting as he ran down the aisle, looking around wildly to find someone nearby who might be able to help.

He ended up finding a group of employees, all of them trailing him as he led them back to the aisle where the man had collapsed, Bucky on his knees beside the man’s body. The expression on his face told Steve everything he needed to know, but he glanced at the man on the floor anyway, just to be sure.

There, on the floor of the arts and crafts aisle, the man laid with his eyes open wide and bloodshot, a dead stare up at the ceiling. The two friends were silent as the staff members gasped and began murmuring in a hush, a crowd beginning to gather due to the commotion.

“I called for an ambulance, but he wasn’t conscious even when I was on the phone,” Bucky explained, frowning as he looked up to Steve.

One of the employees waved Bucky out of the way and quickly took the man’s pulse, just to be sure that he was gone and he looked up with a frown. Steve insisted that they stay until the ambulance arrived, just to make sure that they got all of the information that they could possibly give.

When they were allowed to go, Steve stood on the sidewalk, watching the ambulance drive away, the sirens silent and the lights still dimmed; they were in no rush to get to the hospital, after all. On the way to the subway they barely spoke to one another, Bucky only rubbing soothing circles against Steve’s shoulder and his back, hoping that the action was enough to let him know that everything was going to be alright. Even on the train, they barely exchanged words, just keeping to themselves as they huddled close together.

It wasn’t the first time Steve had seen someone die and he knew that it wouldn’t be the last either. The problem wasn’t death itself, but that it could be so sudden and out of nowhere. He didn’t know the man who had died, hadn’t even exchanged one word with him. But he had interacted with him, seen him minutes before he’d died, and hadn’t known even a second beforehand that _that_ second would be his last.

“You okay?” Bucky finally asked as they made their way up to their floor in their apartment building, stopping side by side at the landing.

“Yeah, I’m alright. It’s just so sudden, you know?”

“What, death?”

“Mmhm,” he agreed, frowning as he stared down at the floor. He wasn’t upset by it. It was more like he was numb with feeling; numbed by the thoughts all rushing through his mind at once. With a deep sigh, he rolled his shoulders and looked up to meet Bucky’s eye again. “What about you, are you okay?”

“Me?” he asked, somewhat surprised that Steve would even ask. “Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, buddy,” the brunet reassured him with a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

For a few long seconds they were both silent, the only sound between them being the sound of Steve’s new shoes tapping against the floorboards as he made his way across the hall to his front door. Bucky was still just at the top of the landing when he turned to look back at him, the brunet’s hands still deep in his pockets, his shoulders tense.

“Thanks for the date, Buck. And for the shoes, I really do love them.”

“Hey, don’t mention it.”

“Night, Buck.”

“Night, Stevie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian translation (provided by Google Translate, I apologize if there are any errors):
> 
> “Natalia! I did not know you were going to be in town this week.”  
> “My schedule got switched around. It is good to see you, James.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Natasha have some time to bond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can follow me on [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) or find out about my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there.  
> Beta'd by the wonderful [lotus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lotus) and [Shilo](http://spoiledrogers.tumblr.com).
> 
> Please check the tags, as they have been updated!

“So, Mister Rogers,” the man cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter from the perch he had taken on the corner of his desk, Steve’s resume in his hand. “It says here you were an art student.”

“Yeah, I was,” he agreed, smiling cheerfully as he did his best to keep his back straight in the chair and his hands in his lap.

“And so, of course, you should apply somewhere like this, right?” the man gestured around to his office, though he assumed that he meant the art supply store in general. “That just makes sense!”

“Um,” he began, not entirely sure how he should answer. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that it made sense for him to work there; he lived close by, it was somewhat within his field, and he shopped there frequently anyway. “Well, I’ve always loved this store. It’s been my favorite for years, especially since you’re very close to my apartment.”

“That so?” the man nodded slowly, scrutinizing him carefully to see if he was lying. Why he would be was a mystery, considering that this was an art supply store, not a high-security area that required background checks. This whole interview was honestly ridiculous; the man conducting the interview, who was the owner of the store, looked more like a kindergarten teacher from the seventies than a store owner and manager.

This place was one of Steve’s backup plans if he hadn’t heard back from a studio by now, which was unfortunately what had happened. He honestly would have done anything to not have to work in retail of any kind again, but he wasn’t going to be picky about where he got a job at this point. A job was a job, and if he could hold one down for at least a few months before he got a solid answer from a studio, well, that was all he needed.

So, here he was with his hair combed nice and neat, his nicest plaid button up with the sleeves rolled down to hide most of his tattoos, and a pair of slacks that he had pressed and hung up overnight so that they wouldn’t get wrinkled. If had to say so himself, he didn’t think he looked half bad, especially compared to the almost rumpled look that the manager was currently sporting.

“Well, Steven—can I call you Steven?”

“Sure.” He hated being called Steven. Only his mother could call him that.

“Steven, it looks to me like you’ve got a lot of potential. You’ve got some good background in retail, definitely a solid background in art. You seem like a great kid, you really do.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Of course, there’s the small issue that we’re not currently hiring, but you seem like a great candidate for anyone who is!”

“Wait—what?” he asked, thinking back to when he walked through the door. There had definitely been a ‘Now Hiring!’ sign taped to the front window. “I thought you _were_ hiring right now. There’s a sign out front.”

The manager laughed and shook his head, even going so far to slap his knee; as if the rest of it hadn’t fully convinced Steve that it was faked. “Oh, that old thing? No, no, no, _no_! It got glued on by one of the old staff members; we can’t get it down! The damn signs to cover it keep getting stolen too. So sorry about the confusion, but we’re definitely _not_ hiring at this time. We’ll keep you on file, though! Maybe you’ll get a call in a few weeks or so!”

With that said the man slapped his resume down on his desk and gave Steve the biggest, fakest smile he had ever seen and began waving him out of his office. Given no room for argument or rebuttal, Steve stood stiffly and made his way out, the door closing with barely an inch behind him. He couldn’t decide which was more of a slap in the face; that the man had come up with a gossamer lie just so that he could deny him the job, or that he had just been denied a job at one of his backups.

Scrubbing a hand over his face and adjusting his glasses, Steve let out a great sigh before heading down one of the aisles of supplies with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his shoulders slumped. Out of sheer habit, he browsed as he walked through the store, honestly not intending to buy anything. He had very little money left to last the rest of the month, but he also was running low on art supplies with all of the work he had been doing on his portfolio. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. And it didn’t exactly help that his eye had almost instantly been drawn to the rows of colored pencils.

They had all types and brands in stock, from the best of the best, to the lower-quality that Steve occasionally had to resort to using simply because of the cheaper price. He shuffled to a stop in front of them, sighing as he looked them over. As he considered his options, he rolled up his sleeves again, seeing as he didn’t exactly need to keep them hidden in the store now that he had no chance of working there.

 Things like colored pencils were what he needed to work, but he needed money to eat and pay his bills. So, he needed to work, which he could do only if he had supplies. It was a vicious never-ending cycle.

His bank account wasn’t so close to zero just yet that he could technically afford at least the cheaper quality, but he knew he’d be cutting quite a few things off of his grocery list just to be able to afford them. And if he was going that far already, why couldn’t he just splurge a little and get the more expensive brand?

The trouble was that he technically could. There was no one else around to stop him. His mother was in the hospice with more important worries on her mind, and he hadn’t ever gotten around to even begin looking for a roommate. The money that he had was for him to use how he liked, but there was a very big difference between needing something and wanting something.

Picking up a box of the brand he preferred in one hand as well as the cheaper brand in the other, he regarded them with equal amounts of scrutiny for a long while. He began wondering if he could make the prices switch around just by wishing for it hard enough, or if that was something he’d just gotten out of a comic book. But the longer he stared at them, the faster he realized that it was either going to be the cheaper brand or nothing at all.

“Hey, Rogers,” a voice directly next to his good ear murmured, making him jump and whirl towards them with his fists outstretched, the colored pencils clacking together in their boxes.

“Natasha?!” he asked, his heart pounding as he let out a hard breath and chuckled nervously as he pressed the pencils to his chest and shook his head. “Goddamn, you scared the hell out of me. I didn’t hear anyone even come in,” he told her, glancing to the front door where a bell had just gone off as someone else wandered into the store. “What are you doing here?”

“Shopping,” she told him easily, looking around as if she was browsing as they chatted. “I figured I should get more into art.”

“Don’t you live, like, all the way across town?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

Steve gave her a curious look, not entirely sure that he believed her. Then again, he honestly didn’t know her that well. For all he knew, she could work nearby. Natasha was a mystery to him, and he had a feeling that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t know her all that well.

“Alright, well, hi,” he greeted with a chuckle, receiving a smile in return as she then focused her attention back on him instead of the store around them. “It’s been a while.”

“Two weeks is a while for you?”

“Well, I mean, I see Bucky at least every other day, and I see Sam every day, or at least talk to him every day, so—yeah, I guess it is.”

“Then yeah, it’s been a while. How’ve you been, kid?” she asked, making Steve’s expression scrunch up into one of dislike.

“You’re younger than me, Nat,” he reminded her, the woman going on twenty-three, while he was going on twenty-four.

“So?” she asked, picking the packages of pencils out of his hands to inspect each of them. “I assume you just don’t like being babied since you’re a shrimp as it is. That it?”

“As a matter of fact, I don’t. No calling me ‘kid’, or ‘shrimp’, or anything else like that. Got it?” he told her, his tone a bit more forceful and demanding than it had been before. She glanced up at him and saw that his expression was hard and determined as well, to which she smirked.

“You got it,” she agreed, tapping the toe of her shoe against the side of Steve’s brand new ones that Bucky bought him. Handing him the pencils again, she nodded towards them, “You planning on getting one of these or are you just loitering?”

With a sigh, he looked them over again and chewed on his lower lip. “I need them, but the ones I usually get are pretty pricey. Which is the reason for my dilemma.”

Natasha, not wasting any time, grabbed the more expensive pencils from his hand and motioned at the other, cheaper brand. “Get those,” she commanded, turning on her heel and heading up to the counter where a girl stood looking half asleep at the register. Steve followed after her with the second set of pencils in hand, but wondering why Natasha would bother bringing the other set up with her if he was getting the cheaper brand. It became clear only when she set the box on the counter and pulled her wallet out from her pocket and handed the cashier her card.

"Are you buying those for me?" he asked, brow creasing in frustration. Why was it that everyone thought that it was just _okay_ to buy him things? It wasn't. Bucky had gotten away with buying him the shoes since he'd been overly tempted in the first place, and he had an employee discount, but Nat wasn't going to get away with it.

"No. You're buying those. I'm buying these," she explained, raising an eyebrow at him as the cashier handed her the receipt and she turned away to sign it and hand it back.

"Right," he agreed, though he wasn't at all sure why Natasha felt the need to buy expensive colored pencils if she was only starting to get more into art. Then again, he knew that if she had to start with something, those would be the best to learn with. They were fantastic quality, always dependable, and perfectly pigmented. That's why they were his favorites. Plus, they labeled the colors on the sides, which helped him since he was colorblind.

"You gonna buy those or just stand there?" the cashier asked him once Natasha had stepped to the side, waiting for him with her shopping bag in one hand and her cell phone cradled in the other.

"Yeah, sorry, here," he handed her the box and pulled out his own wallet, digging out the few crumbled dollars he had left on him, smoothing them out just a bit before handing them to her with a small smile.

With that done, he stood beside Natasha and looked up at her, chancing a glance down at her phone out of curiosity, but she was texting with someone in Russian.

"Russian, huh?" he asked, immediately wondering if that was the lamest thing he could have possibly opened with.

"Yep. Born and raised," she told him without looking up from her screen as they migrated out onto the street, Steve just following her lead.

"Cool," he nodded and bit his lip, hands pushed into his pocket with his bag of pencils hanging from around his wrist and tapping against his thigh as they walked. "So, you met Bucky there, then?"

"What's with the third degree, Rogers?" she asked, finally looking away from her phone with a smirk on her lips. "Planning on reporting me as a Russian spy to the US government?"

"I was only curious. Buck mentioned meeting someone in Europe and coming back to the States with them. Then you came along before and so, you know, I'd like to think that his friends could be mine too." Shrugging, he kicked at the sidewalk, deciding to drop it since she clearly wasn't in the mood for his prying questions. Which was why he was somewhat surprised when he felt an arm link with his and he looked up to see her expression as a clearly amused one.

"You're much too serious, Steve. Loosen up, don't be so tense," she patted his forearm with her palm and began leading him towards the nearest coffee shop without stopping to do so much as ask him if he had to be anywhere or do anything else today. Not that he did, since now he'd been denied for yet another job, but he still found it odd that she didn't even think to ask.

Natasha was a very mysterious person, and she was the kind that Steve believed maybe was always destined to be a little bit mysterious. Unlike the last time he'd seen her, her hair was down and flowing freely past her shoulders, wavy and just as red as it had been before. It honestly blew Steve away that even in a pair of jeans and a loose and somewhat askew tee; she looked like a model that could have easily been seconds away from walking down the runway. And of all people, she had linked her arm with his and was taking him to get coffee together.

As they crossed the street, he noticed heads turning their way as they walked, leading to the realization that all of this felt very much like an impromptu date. Which was probably the strangest thing to ever happen to him. Not to say that he didn't like Natasha; she was beautiful, smart, funny, a bit odd, and overall seemed like a good person. But Steve Rogers was not the type of guy to usually be hanging out with beautiful, smart, funny Russian red-headed women.

While they stood in line together, he couldn't stop himself from shifting awkwardly every few minutes since they had drawn the attention of quite a few customers lingering in the shop. He knew it was mostly because of Natasha, who was clearly just fine with the attention since she paid it literally no mind – between her Russian texting on her phone and her snippets of conversation with Steve, absolutely none of her fucks could be given to anyone else in the area – but it still made him feel as if he was the center of attention, and not in a good way.

Sure, he could stand in front of a room full of people and give a speech if he had to, like when he'd had to take his required speech courses in school, but that didn't mean that he _liked_ having all of the attention in the room on him.

When they sat with their drinks in hand, having found a secluded corner of the shop, it was a lot better. He still felt as if he was going to say something horribly wrong and make her storm out without a moment's notice, but at least he felt as if he could relax a little more.

"I did meet James in Russia," she finally told him, setting her phone on the table as she picked up her drink instead and sipped it slowly. "We became very good friends from the start. He didn't know a word of Russian and he was having a fight with a store clerk who thought that he was insulting him. I cleared things up for him and offered to teach him Russian so that he didn't get himself thrown into prison."

As she spoke, a fond smile came to her lips, her fingers absently stirring her straw in her drink. Watching people remember fond times had always been one of Steve's favorite past times and he wished that he had his sketchbook on him so that he could draw her while she thought. Memories brought out expressions and feelings in people that could never quite be found in any other way; they were as unique as the memories were themselves.

"Sounds like I rubbed off on Bucky a bit more than I thought before he left," Steve told her with a smirk, interrupting her memory and breaking the look of fondness as it morphed into one of curious confusion instead.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, it's just," he shrugged, giving his coffee a sheepish smile, "He was never the troublemaker when we were young, but he got blamed for it since he was older and bigger. Buck never liked fighting or arguing with people unless he had to, and usually if he had to, it was only because I dragged him into it."

Looking back up to Natasha, he saw a spark of understanding light in her eyes just for a moment before she looked away and laughed.

"Well, I guess you did rub off on him, then. The James I know has always been more than willing to get into his fair share of trouble."

"Yeah," Steve said, his smile somewhat sad as he kept his eyes on his coffee instead of daring to look up and meet Natasha's, "Guess Bucky's really changed over the years, huh?"

The gentle touch of fingers against the back of his hand brought his eyes up from where they had been glued to his coffee, his glasses slightly fogged up from the steam slowly drifting up against his face. Natasha curled their fingers together and gave him a smile. "Don't worry; he's not as different as you might think. I'm sure he's still the same boy you grew up with, just with a lot more life experience added on."

Steve nodded and sighed, reaching up with his free hand to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. She was probably right, even if she hadn't known Bucky like he did. Even if she had spent so much more time with him recently than Steve felt like he ever had. Now wasn't the first time that he had wondered about the nature of Natasha and Bucky's relationship, especially with the way she had smiled while remembering how they met.

"So, um, not to be rude or anything but," he began, shifting in his seat and pulling his hand away from Natasha's and curling his fingers around his mug instead. "Do you—have you and Buck ever...you know," he finished awkwardly, not at all sure how to phrase the question.

"You mean, have James and I ever been romantically involved?" she asked another smile on her lips. "No, we haven't. We're just very, very close friends. I'm not really one to enjoy romantic relationships in the first place, and James and I have never been anything more than good friends. You can relax."

For some reason, Steve let out a sigh of relief when he heard that, though he wasn't entirely sure why. "Why should I relax? I was just curious, I mean, you're close, so I wondered-- that's all."

"That's all?" she asked, still smiling. She acted as if she knew something that Steve didn't, which was ridiculous, because he knew exactly why she was smiling that way.

"Yeah, that's all. I'm not— Bucky and I, we're not." Waving his hand around a bit, he sighed and sipped his drink while he tried to collect his thoughts. "I'm not saying that I'm not _interested_ , but I was only asking out of curiosity."

"But you are interested?"

"I'm not saying that I'm not."

"So, you are."

"Nat--"

"Alright, I get it."

Pausing, he regarded her with a skeptical stare.

"Do you?"

"Yeah. You're batting for both teams, right? Bisexual?"

"Well...yeah."

"So, you wouldn't turn James down if he asked, but you're okay with just being good friends too."

Having it spelled out for him so easily felt almost like a punch to the gut. He had accepted his own feelings after Bucky had first moved in; he was attracted to his childhood best friend. That wasn't so hard. He'd always known he was bisexual, not a big deal. But he wanted nothing more than to have his best friend back, so he wouldn't ever think of pursuing the thought of having more with him.

All of that was fine. Not at all new. He just had never said it out loud before, which was really throwing him for a loop.

"Yeah, that's about right," he admitted, his brow creased as he considered it, following it up with a nod.

"Then I get it."

Momentarily, Steve still held doubts about whether she truly did _get it_ as she said, but she held his gaze steady, barely even blinking as he searched her expression. There was a warmth that grew between them that he could feel as he recognized that strong sense of understanding. It rolled off of her in waves, and even though he barely knew her, he felt closer to her already.

A nod summed up his acceptance, accompanied by him reaching across the table to grasp her hand in his own again as they both sipped at their coffee and smiled against the rims of the large mugs.

"You know," he began as their hands separated after a squeeze was shared between them before parting, "I don't know much about you. And you don't know anything more than what Bucky told you about me."

"That's true. Anything you want to know in particular?" she asked, her head tilting just slightly, her hair falling over her shoulder in a way that made Steve want to brush it over her ear. It wasn't that he was incredibly attracted to her -- but then again, who wouldn't be? -- but it was more of wanting to be close to her now that he knew that they could be. They _could_ be friends. Maybe they already were.

"Well, how about a last name?"

"Romanova, but Romanoff is fine too."

"Okay, only other thing that comes to mind is that I really want to know how teaching Bucky Russian went. He wasn't a fan of learning Spanish when we were in school together, so I can only imagine him learning Russian," he told her with a laugh, making her crack a smile as well.

"He wasn't bad. Honestly, he had a good teacher to thank for his fast progress, but it did take time, of course."

Steve sighed and settled for a nod instead of a lengthy reply. He honestly could have gone on and on about how Bucky had hated trying to learn languages when they were young, but he still tried his hardest each and every day. The brunet had always been the brighter of the two of them, with his nose in a book when they weren't fighting off the bullies that had set Steve in their sights. He'd won a few science fairs, even gotten really good at things like engineering and computers.

Steve had never been as good as Bucky was at school, but he had his strengths too. History had been his favorite, especially when they learned about the old wars and how the soldiers had applied different strategies to battle. He'd always been an artist at heart though, and he'd even been pretty good with words and reading.

Buck was as much of a nerd as he was when they were young, but no one saw it that way. No one saw James Buchanan Barnes and thought to call him a nerd. Nah, he was called a troublemaker and a bad influence on poor sickly Steve Rogers. Because it didn't matter who had started the fights to them, it just mattered who finished them.

"Yeah, everything takes time," he murmured, and then downed the rest of his coffee since it had cooled for long enough in his silence. He felt as if he was floating between reality and fiction. The Bucky he knew was so different from the James that Natasha knew it was almost hard to believe that they were one in the same.

"Let's get out of here. This place is ruining my mood," Natasha piped up as she slid her chair away from the table and adjusted her shirt before beckoning Steve closer so that they could walk out together. "C'mon, old man."

"Old man—?"

"You said I couldn't call you kid. You never said anything about calling you old instead," she pointed out, looping their arms together as soon as Steve had finally made sure that they each had their shopping bags from the art store as well as wallets and phones. "Besides, you take more time than my grandmother getting up."

"You'll thank me later for making sure that you didn't leave your phone on the table before we left, you know."

"Oh, please. I don't leave anything behind. I'm responsible like that."

They walked together, still turning heads as they walked arm in arm, Steve didn't mind nearly as much now. It almost felt like an honor to be on Natasha Romanoff's arm; him, a skinny kid born and raised in Brooklyn with a laundry list of problems, hanging out with this Goddess of a woman. It felt good, knowing that he was friends with this person, that he could be near her and smile without it being forced, and that they'd gotten as close as they had this quickly.

"Where are we going, anyway?" he finally asked once they'd been walking and chatting for ten minutes and he realized that he hadn't bothered to pay much attention to their destination or the route they took to get there.

"Your place. I haven't seen it yet."

"Haven't you been to Bucky's apartment?"

"Nope. We're going to see his place as well. I want the grand tour."

"He's at work until late tonight."

"That's alright, I'm sure he won't mind."

Not entirely understanding, Steve pulled a face but didn't protest at all, only slowing down their pace to the bus stop to double-check that he had his keys on him so that he would be able to actually get inside and show Natasha around. They rode the bus side by side, still chatting and laughing. It was incredibly comfortable to be with her, which was surprising to Steve. It wasn't that he was a person that was difficult to get along with, but it was more that he had the people in his life that he cared for, and other than that, most other people didn't connect with him.

Bucky had been one of his only friends while they were growing up. He had classmates that he got along with, or a few friends that phased in and out of his life from time to time, but Bucky stayed. Bucky had been stability and permanent in his life. Until he wasn't.

And then Sam came, and Riley along with him, and they had bonded instantly. Sure, at times, Steve felt like a third wheel and he would step out when the two of them needed space for themselves and their relationship, but they were still the best for friends. When Riley left, it was hard on both of them, but it was harder on Sam. They would be together again soon, fighting for their country, but Steve was being left behind, and if he said that the thought of that didn't hurt, well, he would be lying.

But now, out of nowhere, Bucky was back. And with him, he had brought Natasha into his life. Natasha, who was beautiful and intelligent and understanding and funny. Who already was beginning to feel comfortable enough around him to teach him small phrases in Russian, even on the bus. She told him more about Clint, about how they were sort of together, but in a way that was comfortable for the both of them. They laughed together as if they had been friends for years, not weeks. It was new and it was exciting and it was fun.

This, right then and now, was his life. And Steve Rogers felt honored to be living it.

They got off on the bus stop near Steve's building and walked the rest of the way, arriving just as the sun decided to begin it's decent down to the horizon. Up on the third floor, Steve made a beeline for his door, his key in hand and a sheepish smile on his lips as he turned his head and began to apologize for any mess, when he realized that Natasha was across the hall.

"Nat, he's not home," he reminded her, his hand still on the doorknob of his apartment, but his keys curled in his hand instead of at the lock as he watched her rummage through something at Bucky's door.

"I know, but I told you, he won't mind," she shot him a wicked grin over her shoulder as she shifted in place just enough to allow Steve to see what she was rummaging through. It was a lock picking kit, or at least that's what Steve assumed it was, since she was currently using it to pick Bucky's lock.

"You honestly just want to break into his apartment instead of waiting for him to get home?" Steve asked as he walked across the hall, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her work.

"Yeah, is that a problem?" she asked, not looking away from her work for even a second.

"Not at all," he admitted, watching with rapt attention as she turned the pick and he heard the soft click of the lock rotating. "Oh, that's right; you _do_ have a spare key to his place, don't you?"

Their eyes met as Natasha smiled and opened up Bucky's door as she stashed her kit in her pocket again, then linking their arms together again. "You'd make a good partner in crime, Rogers."

"Don't know why you'd think that. A key's a key, after all."

The redhead laughed and pushed open Bucky's door, letting Steve lead the way inside while she followed close behind, switching on the lights as she went. Bucky's apartment was set up very similarly to his own, though it felt much more cramped with the amount of boxes that he still had stacked in every free space where they would fit. It was, for the most part, boring. It didn't particularly scream 'Bucky Barnes lives here', but Steve honestly hadn't expected much since he spent more time working than at home in the first place.

“Kind of boring to be James’s apartment, isn’t it?” Natasha called from where she’d wandered over into his bedroom, mostly just surveying the area quickly with an incredibly critical eye.

“Doesn’t surprise me. I think he lives at work more than he lives here,” he murmured in return, peering into a few open boxes just to see what it was that he still had left to unpack. There was a lot, honestly. It felt more like Bucky had only just moved in a week ago, not going on a few months now.

“Still. At least when we lived together he didn’t just leave everything packed and lying around like this,” she said with a sigh as she came into the living room where Steve was, also looking into a few of the boxes as she passed by them.

“He’s got a better tv than I do, though,” Steve pointed out, nodding towards the flat screen that was mounted to his wall. They shared a look before racing each other over to the couch and stretching out side by side as they settled in to make good use of Bucky’s giant television.

“Any plan for what to do if he comes home while we’re still here?” he asked as Natasha flipped through the channels.

“I told you, he won’t mind.”


End file.
